' *, ' 
 
 ^f.. 
 
 «i^tJh ' '^«« J 
 
 HN STEPHENSON RO\¥NTREE 
 
 HIS LIFE AND WORK 
 
CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Louise Harries Stanfield 
 
Cornell University Library 
 BX 7795.RS8A3 
 
 John Stephenson Rowntree: his life and w 
 
 3 1924 006 039 980 
 
The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/cletails/cu31924006039980 
 
JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE 
 
- ^^^crvo-iiAua) 
 
 V. 
 
John Stephenson 
 rowntree 
 
 His Life and Work 
 
 Memoir by 
 
 PHEBE DONCASTER 
 
 London: HEADLEY BROTHERS 
 BisHOPSGATE Street Without, E.C. 
 1908. 
 
HEADLEY BROTHERS, 
 
 PRINTERS, 
 
 LONDON ; AND ASHFORD, KENT. 
 
PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 The lectures and articles printed in this volume were not pre- 
 pared by the author with any thought of their being re-issued 
 in collected form. As they relate mainly to one leading subject 
 — the history and distinguishing beliefs of the Society of Friends 
 — some overlapping is inevitable. Any considerable omissions 
 from the text, chiefly made to minimise this overlapping, are 
 marked by asterisks. Notes not by the author are signed by 
 the Editor, Ernest E. Taylor. Norman Penney, Librarian 
 of Friends' Reference Library, Devonshire House, London, E.G., 
 has given great assistance, especially in referring to original 
 authorities. The Editors of The Friend and of the Friends' 
 Quarterly Examiner have kindly allowed the use of articles 
 originally contributed to their periodicals. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 MEMOIR OF JOHN S. ROWNTREE (by Phebe Don- 
 caster) ... - . I 
 
 A TESTIMONY OF YORKSHIRE QUARTERLY 
 
 MEETING - - - - 95 
 
 Part I. 
 THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS IN HISTORY. 
 I. — ^The Life and Character of George Fox - 103 
 II. — ^Micah's Mother. A Neglected Chapter of 
 
 Church History - - - 142 
 
 III. — ^The Place of the Society of Friends in the 
 
 Religious Life of England- - - 177 
 
 Part II. 
 PROBLEMS OF CHURCH LIFE. 
 IV. — The Relations of Denominational to 
 
 National Life ... 221 
 
 V. — Gospel Ministry in the Society of Friends - 243 
 VI. — ^The Work and Maintenance of the Vocal 
 
 Ministry ..... 262 
 
 VII. — Conditions of Congregational Growth - 278 
 
 Part III. 
 EDUCATION IN THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS. 
 VIII. — ^A Sketch of the History of Ackworth 
 
 School, 1779 to 1879 - - - - 301 
 
 IX. — ^A Sicetch of the History of York Friends' 
 
 Boys' School, 1829 to 1878 - 326 
 
 X.— The Educational Policy of Friends - 343 
 
VIU. CONTENTS. 
 
 FAQE 
 
 Part IV. 
 
 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL. 
 
 XI. — ^The Outlook from the York Station Hotel - 361 
 
 XII. — Priest Bowles . . _ 386 
 
 XIII. — ^Samuel Tuke .... - 401 
 
 APPENDICES. 
 
 I. — ^Notices of Other Works by J. S, Rowntree, 
 
 viz. : Quakerism Past and Present ; An Inquiry 
 into the Truthfulness of Lord Macaulay's Por- 
 traiture of George Fox ; The Society of Friends : 
 its Faith and Practice - - . - 425 
 
 II. — Chronological Table - - . . 433 
 
 437 
 
 INDEX 
 
MEMOIR OF 
 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
To all who have given me generous aid in the preparaiion of 
 this Memoir, by their reminiscences, the loan of letters, or in 
 any other way, I return my warmest thanks, in which John S. 
 Rowntree's family desire cordially to unite. What may be of 
 most interest in this record is due to those who have helped by 
 placing their knowledge at my disposal. For faults in presenta- 
 tion I alone am responsible. 
 
 P.D. 
 
MEMOIR OF JOHN S. ROWNTREE. 
 By Phebe Doncaster. 
 
 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE was bom at York, 
 2nd May, 1834, to ^ rich inheritance of character. 
 
 His father, Joseph Rowntree, was a strong, courageous, 
 large-minded man, distinguished by a fine pubUc spirit, and a 
 genius for prompt, decisive action, when action was called for. 
 He was a lovable man, warm-hearted and genial, and dowered 
 with a buoyant elastic temperament which made much for his 
 own happiness and that of others. He did work for his kind 
 for which many to-day are the better and happier. 
 
 His wife, Sarah Rowntree, daughter of Isaac Stephenson, 
 of Manchester, was a woman of great sweetness and strength 
 of character. At one in everything, she seconded her husband 
 nobly in all his undertakings and their married life was one 
 of rare happiness. 
 
 John Stephenson was their eldest child. As a little boy he 
 was full of life and energy, and fond of merry mischief. It was 
 difficult to keep him in his nursery, as he liked to be in the midst 
 of real goings on, and to see what was happening in the larger 
 world around. He was an enterprising and venturesome boy. 
 We are told that "he swung down the bannisters in a way that 
 excited the terror of his nurses, and one day, when at Scar- 
 borough, he succeeded in getting out of an upstairs window, and 
 amused himself by hanging from the window sill with his hands. 
 At another time he burnt off his eyebrows when playing with some 
 gas which he had collected in a large jar." 
 
 2 
 
2 JOHN STEPHENSON EOWNTREE. 
 
 But with all his escapades he was an affectionate, guileless 
 child, and entered with all a child's wondering delight into the 
 beauty he saw around him. He loved to take long country 
 walks round York, or, often, at Scarborough. Even as a little 
 boy he proved himself a close and keen observer. The glad, 
 joyous life of birds and animals awoke in him a thrill of answering 
 sympathy and something of the poet's longing to discover and 
 share the secret of its rapture. 
 
 One day, after noticing a frolicsome little dog rolling on the 
 ground, he was found rolling himself over and over to find out 
 what it felt like, and what made it so enjoyable. 
 
 Even when a grey-haired man he recalled the charm of his 
 toys as distinctly as his delight in Robinson Crusoe. He remem- 
 bered his first top, presumably when he was " three or four 
 years old. It was a humming top," he said, in one of his essays, 
 " large as a turnip, resonant as a bumble bee." 
 
 He used to tell how one of his earliest memories was that 
 of seeing the Roman Baths uncovered on the site of the old 
 railway station. He would describe the large pipes leading 
 to the river, and his interest in learning the meaning of the word 
 Ouse as Celtic for water. 
 
 A delightfully characteristic little journal has been preserved, 
 begun when he was six years old. It notes, with careful exacti- 
 tude, facts and events such as were of interest to him all his life. 
 His habits of verifying statements for himself, and making sure 
 of his facts, began early, and we can imagine the completeness 
 of satisfaction with which the little boy of six-and-a-half sat down 
 to record the result of one of his early experiments : 
 
 " I mo. 5. 1841 
 " We put some worsted into a mug of water, and let it hang 
 into a dry mug, and it brings the water down into it." 
 
 It may have been the same wish to put everything to the 
 test of experience and to realise some of a traveller's sensations 
 which led him, as a small boy, to sleep out on the floor of an 
 open landing— probably the nearest available approach to the 
 exciting experience of a night on the bare ground with nothing 
 
MEMOIR. 3 
 
 between him and the stars — to wake, alas ! in the morning from 
 Wissful dreams of adventure to the disapproving amazement 
 of his nurse. 
 
 To return to the httle journal. The next entry notes an event 
 often recalled in after life : — 
 
 " 1 mo. 9. 1841. 
 " The day before yesterday the thermometer was at 4°, and 
 Aunt Hannah and I went to look at the people skating on the Ouse, 
 and Henry [a younger brother] walked across it with Mary." 
 
 The opening of the Darlington and York Railway is dvly 
 recorded, also the number of bells on his hyacinth ; drives with 
 his parents to Cottingwith and Selby Monthly Meetings, and 
 the various interesting things the youthful diarist saw at Selby. 
 After visiting Scalby Mills with a younger brother he notes 
 — with secret joy in the remembrance of the episode — 
 " We got into the mill-dam and got very wet." 
 
 The home life must have been a very happy one in its perfect 
 mutual trust and confidence. The little ones grew up in an 
 atmosphere of love and duty, and the joy of service ; and whilst 
 folded round by parental love and prayer, they were left free 
 -to develop their own individuality. 
 
 The religious influence of the parents was as wise as it was 
 loving. It was not of a kind to make a chUd think about himself 
 in any spirit of anxious or premature self-questioning. Its 
 aim was not only to make him familiar with the story of the life 
 and love of Jesus in Judea and Galilee, but to help him to under- 
 stand his own experience and to recognise in the voice of con- 
 science, in its prompting to right and its condemnation of wrong, 
 the guiding presence of the same loving unseen Friend and 
 Helper. And as the constant care and goodness of the Heavenly 
 Father were dwelt upon. His claim, as Father, to the response 
 of answering love and loyalty was taken for granted as simply 
 and naturally as the claim of the human father to the love and 
 obedience of his children. 
 
 To such influences the sensitive, sympathetic nature of the 
 growing boy readily and early responded. 
 
4 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 His mother was one of those beautiful and saintly souls to- 
 whom the vision of Christ, the recognition of His presence, was 
 given in very early childhood, and continued through a long 
 life of close communion. There is every reason to believe that 
 her son was thinking not only of her experience, but of his own, 
 when in later years he said * : — 
 
 " The children of Friends have no need to wait for their first 
 communion. They are privileged to come to their first communion 
 in the very opening days of their Christian life." 
 
 The first break in the happy family circle came with the 
 death of the darling of the home, little " Sally," when about 
 three. The child next in age recalls, as almost her first memory 
 of her brother John, then twelve years old, her wondering awe at 
 his extreme sorrow over an event she was herself too young to 
 understand. 
 
 After some years of home lessons under a succession of teachers, 
 John S. Rowntree began, in 1845, to attend the Friends' School, 
 then in Lawrence Street, of which John Ford was head- 
 master. 
 
 In the early stages of his school life he took as keen an interest 
 in botany as in history, and distinguished himself by his excellent 
 collection of pressed plants and ferns — for even then the study 
 of Natural History was warmly encouraged in the School. 
 
 His straightforwardness in everythmg, with his kindly dis- 
 position, won him the confidence of masters and schoolfellows,, 
 and his influence was greater than he knew. Dr. Spence Watson 
 gave the " Old Scholars," at their meeting in May, 1907, some 
 interesting reminiscences of his schoolfellow. He said : 
 
 "... When I was a young lad at York School, I suppose- 
 sixty years ago, and he was one of the older boys, and one of those 
 we looked up to very much, he was exceedingly and pecuUarlv 
 kind to me. John Stephenson Rowntree was a boy for whom 
 we all had a great respect. He was an excellent runner, an eaeer 
 participant in all the games, an admirable cricketer, and one who- 
 
 * At the Yearly Meeting of 1900. 
 
MEMOIR. 5 
 
 tad a strong moral influence unobtrusively but powerfully felt 
 ■through the School."* 
 
 Out of school he was shy| and quiet, and fond of reading. 
 
 But his delight in skating and in cricket was something he always 
 
 lemembered. Long afterwards he wrote : — 
 
 " When I left school I thought I never could be so happy again 
 as I had been playing cricket." 
 
 In later years he felt that he had missed something, as a day 
 boarder, through not sharing completely in the life of the School, 
 and he arranged that his own children should live altogether at 
 -the schools to which he sent them. 
 
 On leaving school in 1850, he received the following letter from 
 his head-master, who wrote on behalf of himself and his wife, 
 Rachel Ford :— 
 
 " I send thee herewith and request thy kind acceptance of Dr. 
 Arnold's Lectures on History, as a small token of the pleasant recol- 
 lections with which my dear R. and myself look back upon the 
 time during which we have had the partial care of thee, and of the 
 affectionate interest with which we take leave of thee as a scholar. 
 
 " Though sorry to lose the influence of such in the school, yet 
 it is with something more than pleasure that I see a youth arrive 
 at the end of his schoolboy course, after having contributed dUigently 
 and successfully to maintain and to elevate the standard of intellect- 
 ual attainment and of integrity and purity of conduct and con- 
 versation ; more especially if he has given evidence that something 
 far beyond mere conventional propriety has been the spring and 
 impulse which have prompted him thus to stand by the right. Accept 
 irom us the accompanying volume as a testimonial that we believe 
 that such has been thy course, and that we are very truly thy affec- 
 tionate friends, John and R. Ford." 
 
 When the summer holidays were over, in 1850, J. S. Rowntree 
 entered his father's tea and grocery business in the Pavement, 
 York. He gave himself with his usual thoroughness, to the mastery 
 of its details and soon made himself a very efficient helper. 
 
 * Boothatn, vol. iii. no. 5. 
 
 t "So much is to be learnt from other minds, often more than from 
 books. I think I have missed good I might have got in this way, from 
 shyness." — J.S.R. to S.E.R. 27. x. 1878. 
 
6 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 In these years of happy comradeship in work the strong bond 
 of sympathy between father and son was drawn closer, and 
 resulted in an increasing fellowship in thoughts and interests. 
 
 Joseph Rowntree was an energetic and successful man of 
 business, but his business, though important, never occupied the 
 first place in his thoughts. " The large matters which concern 
 human welfare " were always of keen interest to him. His private 
 o£&ce often became a council chamber where matters of high- 
 moment to the Society of Friends, or to his own city, were 
 discussed with kindred minds, some of them among the leading" 
 men of their day ; and, after earnest conference, decisions were 
 formed on educational or other points which have vitally affected, 
 the lives of succeeding generations. 
 
 The late Samuel Tuke, at times with one of his sons, Daniel, 
 or James Hack, came in almost daily to confer with his friend,, 
 often on pubUc affairs, and to consider plans of action. Samuel 
 Tuke was sixteen years the senior, and Joseph Rowntree looked 
 up to him, almost as to an elder brother. 
 
 A letter from the late James Hack Tuke, acknowledging a, 
 biographical sketch of his father, prepared for the Friends' 
 Quarterly Examiner* which had given him special pleasure because 
 written by a son of his father's " great friend and almost daily- 
 companion," refers to " the almost daily calls in the Pavement " 
 as he walked home with his father in the evening. " I want 
 just to see Joseph," was an ahnost constant remark as the 
 father released his arm from his son's, and "made his way 
 to the ' Counting-house ' as it was called."' Joseph Rowntree's- 
 enquiry, " ' Is Samuel in ? ' was nearly as frequent, as he looked 
 in when passing the old Castlegate premises " ; also " First-day 
 evening teas at Lawrence Street f in summer, and the after 
 walk to the Meeting together." 
 
 Joseph Rowntree's fellow citizens and friends were continually 
 coming in to consult him about their troubles and perplexities 
 to be met always with enheartening sympathy, and often to find. 
 
 • See chapter xiii. -f Samuel Tuke lived in Lawrence Street. 
 
MEMOIR. 7 
 
 a way through difficulties where no way could be seen before. 
 They had discovered the truth of what one who knew him well 
 said : — 
 
 " Joseph Rowntree possessed a power I never saw equalled to 
 make the concerns of others his own, with an ability to view all 
 sides of a question which must surely have been the reason why so 
 many resorted to him for counsel." 
 
 His character was " almost as remarkable for its tenderness as 
 its force," for its radiating joyousness as for its strenuous earnest- 
 ness. Wherever he went he gave the impression of a general 
 largeness of nature. In words apphed to him by the late Daniel 
 H. Tuke, M.D., " he was * of much device in council, considerate 
 in a sick room, joyous at a festival, and not to be shrivelled up 
 into any one form, fashion, or temperament.' " 
 
 Joseph Rowntree had done much for education, and the 
 Friends' Schools at York and Ackworth owe more to him than can 
 be told. It was largely through his energy and initiative that the 
 removal of the Boys' School to Bootham was brought about. 
 Encouraged by Samuel Tuke, he had been the leader in starting 
 the Quarterly Meeting School for Girls, opened in 1831, in Castle- 
 gate, and removed in 1857 to its present site on the Mount. This 
 has been spoken of as " his standing memorial." From 1830 until 
 his death, he was honorary secretary to both Schools, and their 
 welfare lay very near to his heart. 
 
 It can readily be imagined that constant association 
 in work and interests with such a man as his father, and 
 with the friends he gathered round him must have -had a very 
 stimulating influence in these years of John S. Rowntree's youth 
 and early manhood. His mind and character matured early, 
 and his intellectual independence of thought and judgment 
 asserted itself. 
 
 Loyalty was always one of his strongest instincts. His 
 sympathetic nature could not but be deeply interested in the 
 great questions which he often heard discussed, nor could he fail 
 to be impressed by the strength of conviction with which the 
 views he listened to were held. But it was impossible to him 
 
8 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 to accept, as proved, the conclusions of others, even of those he 
 loved and reverenced most. It was a necessity of his nature to 
 think out everything for himself. He became a diUgent student 
 of history, taking special interest in Church history, and sought 
 to test every theory which challenged his attention, every asser- 
 tion to which he Ustened, by the facts of life, in history and 
 human experience. 
 
 He must have been long aware of his father's concern about 
 the declining state of the Society of Friends. This concern had 
 laid hold upon Joseph Rowntree in very early life. Even when 
 a young man of twenty-four he was (with his elder brother John 
 Rowntree, of Scarborough), full of anxiety about the future of the 
 Society ; in fact he saw no far future for it, unless radical changes 
 were made and new life infused. His concern was not shared 
 by those around him, who felt it disturbing to their peace. He 
 was rather severely taken to task for his fears, and urged not to 
 worry. 
 
 But the well meant counsel was in vain. He continued to 
 ponder over the causes of dechne, and to work quietly for reform 
 and reconstruction with the hope and prayer that when the time 
 was ripe, his son might devote himself to the upbuilding which 
 he saw to be so necessary. Under date 4 mo. 21, 1851, he 
 wrote to his son John : — 
 
 " Thou has already noticed, I doubt not, how few there are 
 willing to devote time, strength and property to the service of their 
 fellow creatures, and to the afiairs of our own Religious Body, 
 as evidence of their gratitude to Him, who in His love to us, gave 
 His own life for us — offering it as an atonement for our sins — and 
 enabling us, through our confidence in Him, to look unto God as a 
 reconciled Father. May my dear John be one of this number, and 
 may we both feel that we are not our own ; but that, being bought 
 with a price, we are bound by the claims of gratitude to live unto Him 
 and not unto ourselves." 
 
 Meantime his son's life was becoming fuU of activities and 
 interests. Soon after leaving school he had begun on Sundays 
 to teach a class of boys, a work of absorbing interest, out of 
 which much larger things were to grow in the future. His 
 
MEMOIR. 9 
 
 position as the eldest son at home involved, at times, duties and 
 responsibilities not altogether easy to his shy and retiring nature, 
 and his watchful mother did not fail to put in, now and then, a 
 word of encouraging reminder. We find her writing to him 
 during her absence with his father, at the Yearly Meeting of 
 1853 :— 
 
 " I am glad to think thou will be with the dear ones in Bootham 
 to-morrow, and extend some care and right influence over them ; 
 be not backward, my dear boy, to take thy right place in the family, 
 and support good order and good feeling when we are absent as well 
 as present." 
 
 Business then, as for long afterwards, was exacting in its 
 claims. The hours were long and left him little leisure for the 
 pursuits of his choice, and for the thought and study with which 
 he prepared for his engagements. He read many of Isaac 
 Taylor's books, which appealed strongly to his reflective nature, 
 and which probably helped, in their turn, to strengthen his 
 judicial habits of mind. 
 
 But underlying his intellectual calmness and freedom from 
 bias, there was much fervour of spirit. At an age when the 
 story of a noble career makes perhaps its most powerful appeal, 
 helping to form the standards or shape the ideals of a lifetime, 
 it is remembered that one book by which he was deeply stirred 
 was the memoir of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, which formed 
 the theme of earnest, though unrecorded, discussions with his 
 friend and schoolfellow, Frederic Seebohm. 
 
 When he reached the age of twenty-one, he was taken into 
 partnership, and left his father's home in St. Mary's to live in 
 the Pavement, and at this early age, to preside over a large 
 household of young men. 
 
 Meantime his interest in his own religious community had 
 been steadily deepening. Questions with regard both to its past 
 and future began to stir in his mind, rousing him to earnest 
 thought and study. Wherever he went in his travels, and on his 
 holidays, he attended the meetings of Friends, sometimes in Uttle 
 out-of-the-way country places, sometimes in the towns, and 
 
10 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 everywhere he took careful note of their condition and of changes 
 that were taking place. In 1853, he was present at the last sitting 
 of Settle Monthly Meeting, when it was transferred to Brighouse 
 Monthly Meeting. 
 
 In 1854, he attended for the first time the Yearly Meeting of 
 Friends in London. It was before the days of quick reports and 
 aweekiy Friend, and he wrote home accounts of the proceedings. 
 Always on the watch for the aim and point of an address, he took 
 no note of irrelevancies, but enlivened his report with a touch 
 of criticism now and then. 
 
 He says (26th May, 1854) : — 
 
 " The discussion on the State of the Society disappointed me. 
 Several spoke with clearness and power to some points, but no one 
 grappled with the subject in a large and comprehensive manner." 
 
 A mature criticism from a youth of twenty, and one reveaUng 
 his habit of mind which, even then, led him to view questions 
 in their relation to one another and to a larger whole. 
 
 In 1856, he was again at the Yearly Meeting. He noted 
 with something like alarm that one large Quarterly Meeting 
 reported the absence of vocal ministry in two-thirds of its 
 meetings. 
 
 Facts like this sank deep into the mind of the young listener, 
 and were silently pondered over. 
 
 The opportunity for utterance was near at hand. It came 
 at one of the most intense and vivid periods of a young man's 
 life, for he was looking forward to marriage in the summer 
 of 1858, with Elizabeth Hotham, of Leeds, who was to prove 
 herself, through more than sixteen years of happy union, strong 
 to uphold and tender in faithful love and s)mipathy. 
 
 In March of this year, 1858, there appeared a public invitation 
 for essays on the causes of the decline in the Society of Friends. 
 It was not a tune when it was easy to undertake such a task, 
 but here was his opportunity, and he would not miss it. His 
 essay, one amongst a large number of others, was awarded the 
 first place, and afterwards pubUshed under the title of Quakerism 
 
MEMOIR. ir 
 
 Past and Present, being an enquiry into the causes of its decline in 
 Great Britain and Ireland.* 
 
 It is a sketch of the history of the Society of Friends from its 
 rise, written with the aim of tracing the causes of its decHne to 
 their source, and showing how the seeds of weakness had 
 been sown through inadequate or partial conceptions of 
 truth, and through mistakes and imperfections in Church 
 arrangements. 
 
 These causes might be roughly grouped under three heads, 
 and their nature is indicated by the three directions in which he 
 pointed out the urgent need for change. 
 
 (i) — ks the goal to be aimed at. That the Society of Friends 
 should seek to live for others and not for itself. That it should 
 recognise its mission to the world, and give its message faithfully, 
 since its very life depends on going forward. The Church which 
 lives for itself must die. 
 
 (2) — That to set itself free for this great task, and make it 
 possible to fulfil it, the Society should break fettering bonds in its 
 organisation, or " discipline," as it is called, and abolish rules inter- 
 fering with individual liberty. Especially that it should cease to 
 disown its members for marrying out of the Society, or for paying 
 church-rates or tithes : in short, that it should cease to enforce a rigid 
 uniformity of faith and practice where no moral law was infringed ; 
 and that it should leave the individual conscience free. 
 
 (3) — That in order to do these things — to become qualified 
 to do them — and so fulfil its mission, its members should seek to 
 consecrate themselves afresh to the service of Truth, and in an 
 earnest, humble spirit set themselves anew to learn its lessons. That, 
 through study of Scripture and experience, it should gain truer, wider 
 views of the nature of Spiritual guidance, and a spiritual call. That 
 it should recognise the sacredness of all gifts and all life, and 
 learn to practice a freer and wider adaptation of means to ends ; 
 and that the Society should give itself with energy to the better 
 moral and reUgious education of its members, particularly of its 
 children, t 
 
 These thoughts are very familiar now to Friends. Since that 
 time they have been again and again urged upon us by a noble 
 
 * Smith Elder & Co., 1859. 
 f See Appendix I. 
 
12 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 band of leaders, notably in recent years by the late John Wilhelm 
 Rowntree, an inheritor in a large degree of the spirit of his grand- 
 father, Joseph Rowntree, and the teaching has borne fruit. Many 
 of the reforms pleaded for have been effected. A new spirit has 
 been aroused, and work for others, through Adult Schools, Home 
 and Foreign Missions and, more recently. Summer Schools and 
 Settlements, has rekindled interest and zeal, and helped to 
 inspire new life and vigour. 
 
 But whilst, in the last generation, many bore upon their 
 hearts the need for reform and re-vitalisation, it should not be 
 forgotten that John S. Rowntree was the first to give adequate 
 expression to this need, and to bring home to the Society at large 
 the danger which threatened it. He was the first to explain 
 clearly and comprehensively, so that all could understand, the 
 causes which had worked together to bring about this condition, 
 and which needed only to be stated to suggest the lines of 
 remedy. 
 
 The book aroused great interest, and was widely read ; some- 
 times with alarm and dismay, sometimes with indignation ; but 
 by minds prepared for it, the essay was welcomed with sympathy 
 and thankfulness. 
 
 John Bright wrote : — 
 
 " Rochdale, 
 
 " 12 mo. 15. 1859. 
 " My dear Friend, 
 
 " It was very kind of thee to send me a copy of thy book. 
 I have read it, with great pleasure, and yet not without sorrow. 
 I derived pleasure from its style, its accurate reasoning, its en- 
 lightened views, and its excellent temper ; and the sorrow was caused 
 by the reflection that, although so many causes of the declension 
 of our Society are clearly pointed out, it is dif&cult, perhaps im- 
 possible, to see how the long existing mischief can now be remedied. 
 This puzzles me extremely, and the more I think of it the more 
 difficult does it seem to make the changes which are supposed to 
 be needful— for these changes must not only be made, but must be 
 worked out by instruments formed in a different school, and with 
 ahnost wholly difierent aims. The only comfort is that the Friends 
 are, after aU, the most tolerant people on earth, and I verily believe 
 
MEMOIR. 13 
 
 our little Church is the only one that could freely discuss and make 
 great reforms, without schism and something like dissolution. So 
 we may hope to go on by degrees ... I hope the work may 
 do much good . 
 
 " I am thy sincere friend, 
 
 " John Bright." 
 
 Others wrote in quite an opposite strain. One dear Friend, 
 whom everyone loved and honoured, misunderstood the object 
 of the essay and was much troubled by it. He was too kind and 
 direct to relieve his feelings by a denunciatory letter to one of the 
 Society's periodicals, but he wrote to the young author himself, 
 rebuking the presumption which had led him to imagine weak- 
 nesses in " our beloved Society," and to question the wisdom of 
 its venerable usages. The mingled feelings with which the book 
 was received on its appearance, and the fear felt by some that any 
 criticism of the current views and practices of Friends meant 
 laying profane hands upon a sacred ark, will perhaps be better 
 understood if part of the letter referred to is given here : — 
 
 " No member of the Society should treat its history, its insti- 
 tutions and its reputations as thou hast done. . . . Dost thou 
 not think, on a calm review, that there is something in the style 
 of thy writing, that there is at least in appearance, an air of scorn and 
 contempt for the Society and its usages and practices ? 
 
 " Perhaps no writer has made more use of the term ' Quaker ' 
 than the late Thomas Clarkson — ^but he does it with a friendly aim, 
 and generally in a kind and approving intention — thy use of it is far 
 otherwise. 
 
 " In my apprehension, many of thy statements are incorrect 
 or overstrained . . . With respect to the Discipline and its 
 exercise for payment of tithes and church rates, as though dis- 
 ownments on these grounds were very numerous, I consider thy 
 manner of representing it is unfair and untrue. ... I have 
 been intimately acquainted with the administration of the Discipline 
 for seventy years and cannot recall to mind an instance of disownment 
 for the payment of tithes or church rates. Church teaching should 
 be to edify, to buUd up — ^not to demolish, scatter and break down 
 all the useful waymarks ; this sort of teaching will do us no good. 
 I would be thankful to hear that thou hast seen thy error. Thy 
 grieved and afflicted friend ." 
 
14 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 Part of the reply to this may be given here. After thanking 
 the writer for his letter, and expressing his inability to reply 
 to many criticisms received, John S. Rowntree continues : — 
 
 " but I cannot pass by one from a ' Bishop ' like thyself (using 
 the word in its apostolic sense), without expressing my regret that 
 anything in the book referred to should have grieved thee. In 
 treating of so great a subject as that on which I have written, it 
 would indeed be presumptuous for me to suppose that in all cases 
 I have spoken the truth as wisely and as judiciously as it might 
 have been done — ^but after the calm review which the fifteen months 
 that have elapsed since the work was written have enabled me to 
 take, I am of the decided judgment that there is no just ground for 
 the accusation that the Society is treated with ' scorn and contempt,' 
 and the very reverse was indeed my feeling. The use of the word 
 ' Quaker ' for 200 years has so famDiarised us with it that we now 
 hardly look on it as a reproachful appellation. ... I trust I 
 shall never be ashamed to acknowledge a mistake and so to own, 
 as the poet says, 'I am wiser to-day than yesterday,' and if through 
 inadvertence any fact be wrongly stated — or any opinion expressed 
 which can be shown to contravene sound reason. Scripture, or 
 experience, I shall be more than willing to retract it. I do not 
 see that thou estabUshes any one of thy points, and highly as I should 
 value thy opinion on many questions, I apprehend that individual senti- 
 ment, unsupported by evidence, is of comparatively little value when 
 urged against a large amount of carefully ascertained fact. I could 
 have wished that thy seventy years observation of the working 
 of our discipline, etc., had led thee to the same result as my short 
 experience, but thou wilt remember, my dear friend, that in that 
 seventy years, the Society has diminished one-third, — and there 
 must be something very wrong when a noble vessel founders on a 
 smooth sea. Thy letter will make no difference in my mind as to 
 the veneration with which I look up to thy great experience ; nor 
 lessen my love to thee for thy work's sake." 
 
 To the charge that instead of decorously veiling he had laid 
 bare the weaknesses of his own religious body, John S. Rowntree 
 had indeed to plead guilty. He had — 
 
 " read each wound, each weakness clear ; 
 And struck his finger on the place. 
 And said : Thou attest here, 
 
 arid here ! " 
 
MEMOIR. 15 
 
 — but after years, the devotion of a lifetime, were to prove the love 
 and loyalty which had prompted his action. 
 
 It may be mentioned that in advanced life J. S. Rowntree 
 remarked that on only one point had he materially changed 
 any opinion advocated in this Essay. He had written in his 
 youth against birthright membership. In later years he defended 
 it. The change of thought was largely brought about by his 
 deepening sense that all through life every step upward and 
 onward in spiritual experience means a fuUer recognition of 
 spiritual realities and relationships existing before, and only 
 waiting to be seen and grasped to become the actual and joyful 
 experience of the seeking soul. A spiritual inheritance, like any 
 other, is a personal possession before it is practically entered 
 upon and enjoyed ; it is a possession until renounced or forfeited. 
 John S. Rowntree came to regard birthright membership as 
 largely based upon a perception of this truth. He would illus- 
 trate it by the relation and love of parent to child, or the fact of 
 nationality before its meaning can be understood and valued. 
 
 Experience came in to strengthen this view. As his own 
 children grew up around him, he felt any other position unthink- 
 able ; and more and more he came to value the help, both to 
 parents and children, of their being members of the Society from 
 the first, and as members, the objects of its loving care and 
 oversight. 
 
 His later attitude towards this question is shown in an article 
 published in the Friends' Quarterly Examiner, Fourth Month, 
 1872, entitled, " Membership in the Society of Friends." 
 
 The writing of Quakerism Past and, Present marked an epoch 
 in John S. Rowntree's life. It was an event which influenced 
 its whole after course. For he had had a vision of what might 
 have been if, from the first. Friends had been true to their calling. 
 They might have become such a power in the land as to make 
 its whole history different, and in incalculable ways the world 
 might have been a better and a happier world. Not for the 
 sake of a small religious denomination, but for the sake of 
 humanity, he mourned over the chances lost and opportunities 
 
l6 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 missed. And then there came to him another vision of what 
 yet might be, of " a great people to be gathered," of great deeds 
 to be done as soon as Friends are ready for them. 
 To the late William Thistlethwaite he wrote :— 
 
 " 24. 2. i860. 
 
 " It is beyond the range of human capacity adequately to estimate 
 the amount of happiness that might have been conferred on mankind 
 had the Society of Friends maintained the numerical position it held 
 in 1680. Its numbers would now have exceeded 300,000. . . . 
 What influence would not such a body have exercised on the govern- 
 ment of England ! Can we over-estimate the reproach that has 
 been brought on the Christian name by the selfish cruelty of English- 
 men in heathen lands ? Leaving slavery out of the question, I take 
 it that the unrighteous doings of the strong white men towards 
 the weak aborigines of America, of Kaffir Land, of Polynesia, of 
 India and of China, are amongst the foulest modern blots on England's 
 escutcheon. Could the Opium Trade have been nursed into its 
 present proportions, could the Indian and Chinese Wars ever have 
 been perpetrated, had a quarter of a miUion true-hearted Friends 
 lived in England ? When we think what 20,000 have done, we say 
 assuredly not ! And who then shall say what hindrances to the 
 Redeemer's Kingdom could have been removed, or rather, would 
 never have existed ? Such considerations convince me that it need 
 be in no spirit of partizanship or mere sectarian narrowness, that 
 we ask, even earnestly, what are the remedies for the present state 
 of the Society of Friends. 
 
 " We cannot beUeve that the Head of the Church is less wUling 
 than formerly to dispense the gifts and graces of His Holy Spirit. 
 If He were, aU attempts at mere human reformation would be 
 impotent. It is my belief that if we were to entertain broader and 
 ampler (and in reality more self-humbling) views, in reference to 
 the work of the Holy Spirit, that these gifts would be greatly multi- 
 pUed among us, to the edification of the body. There would be 
 more of prayer, private, family, and congregational, more rightly 
 authorised Ministers. A loving, gathering spirit would infuse itself 
 into every department of ecclesiastical action, and instead of the 
 gates of the Church being ' open continually ' for the expulsion 
 of the disowned, they would be shut neither day nor night to the 
 accession of new converts in the warmth of their first love and 
 instead of being ' despised, so that no man went through 
 her,' she would become ' an eternal excellency, a joy of manv 
 generations.' " 
 
MEMOIR. 17 
 
 " The best way to deal with things as they are is to see them 
 as they ought to be." 
 
 A vision had been given him of what Friends might have been 
 — of what they yet may be ; and it was a vision he never forgot. 
 For it came to him as a call to labour for its realisation. He 
 had had his dreams of the future, of a possibly distinguished 
 public career, but now they were merged in a larger and finer 
 ambition, an ambition not for himself alone but for the body to 
 which he belonged, that it might take its true place, the place it 
 was meant for, in the service of humanity. He longed that it 
 might throw off its shackles, put on new strength and gird'itself 
 for the fulfilment of its high destiny. 
 
 What could be more worth doing than to help, as far as one 
 man might, to bring this about ? How could it be brought about 
 unless it was energetically worked for, and who more bound to 
 work for it than he ? 
 
 And so, without any flourish of trumpets, very quietly and 
 simply, just doing " the next thing " as it came, he gave himself 
 to what was to be a lifelong labour of love. 
 
 He was not a man of leisure or of large means. He could 
 not forsake his business for what might have seemed a higher 
 task, but his life was to be one more proof that he " who keeps 
 one end in view makes aU things serve." He had the welfare 
 of his own reUgious community, and the larger welfare involved 
 in it, so constantly at heart, that all his experience was made to 
 serve it, often in unexpected and surprising ways. 
 
 New and unlocked for duties were soon to come crowding 
 upon him. His father died in 1859, sinking under an illness 
 which had attacked him in what seemed the fulness of his strength 
 and vigour, and in the midst of many and varied labours for his 
 own city and the Society of Friends. 
 
 In the almost overwhelming sorrow of his personal loss John 
 S. Rowntree at once responded to the call to take his share in the 
 attempt to carry on his father's work. 
 
 Amongst other offices he accepted the secretaryship of the 
 Friends' Schools in York and gave himself with earnest care to 
 
l8 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 the duties of the post, which he continued to hold until 1897, with 
 ever-increasing interest, and if possible, increasing devotion. 
 In addition to the secretaryship he held the office of honorary 
 treasurer to the Girls' School for forty-four years. 
 
 Perhaps no line of service could have been more congenial 
 to him, or have better furthered the aims he had at heart. 
 
 He had formed the highest estimate of the importance of 
 educational work as laying the foundation of every other form 
 of service for man, and he looked upon the vocation of the teacher 
 as one of the highest that any man or woman could follow. 
 
 He desired that the education given should be as thorough and 
 complete as possible, that it should aim at making the best of 
 every boy and girl, and that educators themselves should be 
 efficiently trained and equipped. 
 
 At this time the interest felt in the higher education of boys 
 and girls was not nearly so widespread as it is now : nor was the 
 nobility of the teacher's calling and status at all adequately or 
 generally recognised. It was a great encouragement and stimulus 
 to those on the teaching stafE of the Schools to have a secretary 
 so warmly in sympathy with their highest aims, and desirous to 
 forward them in every possible way. 
 
 John S. Rowntree was not content merely to fulfil the technical 
 duties of his post. The heads of the Schools soon found that they 
 had in him a trustworthy friend to whom they could talk freely 
 of the immediate problems they were facing, their difficulties and 
 perplexities. They found him ready to consider these with a 
 helpful and comprehending sympathy which made it easier to see 
 the right way through them, and left the relieving sense of a 
 responsibility shared. His visits were very frequent. At any 
 time of special strain or anxiety, as in a case of illness in either 
 School, he would call in daily, to see what help it might be possible 
 for him or others outside to render. The members of the teaching 
 staff, one or two at a time, were often asked to his house, especially 
 after his removal to Mount ViUas in 1865. 
 
 In these early days the teachers were often less highly qualified, 
 scholastically, than they are now, but even those who were 
 
MEMOIR, 19 
 
 youngest and least experienced, who might be feeling humbly 
 conscious of small attainments, found themselves welcomed 
 when they came to Mount Villas, not only with wannth and 
 courtesy as friends, but with a very pleasant kind of distinction 
 and respect — an honour rendered to the calling they had chosen 
 — which tended to raise it still higher in their own estimation, 
 and to make them more than ever desirous to prove them- 
 selves worthy of it. In the course of time, boys and girls from 
 the Schools also came to be frequent guests. Their host would 
 think of interesting things to tell them, or he would compare 
 nature notes with them and encourage them to talk of anything 
 they had observed in their walks and excursions : the birds 
 they had seen or heard, or the flowers or ferns they had dis- 
 covered. The youngest boy or girl who had a relevant fact 
 to offer or an observation to report found it listened to as defer- 
 entially as if a University Professor were the speaker ; and 
 there came, in time, to be happy rivalries as to who could hear 
 the first cuckoo or see the first swallow or swift of the year, 
 or who could enjoy a thrush's song at the earliest hour in the 
 morning, and so on. 
 
 Young students found that to the end of his life, John S. 
 Rowntree was a student himself, always searching for fresh illus- 
 trations of whatever subjects he was engaged upon. 
 
 He would ask some unexpected question about an interesting 
 fact, or start an inquiry as to its cause to which no one could 
 reply, explaining that he was trying himself to find out the 
 answer, and so would start other minds too on a new line of 
 inquiry or observation. 
 
 A former pupil at the Mount contributes some recollections of 
 her schoolgirl visits. She enjoyed pretending to resent the 
 " searching questioning to which one was subjected as to what 
 was meant by ' bands ' in the phrase, a clergyman's ' gown and 
 bands ' ; what writing materials did Alcuin use ? and many other 
 kindred questions. 
 
 " I remember once, after answering ' I don't know ' many times 
 in succession, being goaded to retort ' It is now my turn to ask a 
 question, in my own line, — ^Do you admire a dress, made with 
 
20 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 a Watteau pleat down the back? This rash indiscretion was 
 soon punished, for I was subjected to a searching interrogation 
 as to the date of the French painter Watteau, the school of art 
 to which he belonged, etc., which soon reduced me to the usual 
 murmur of ' I don't know.' Many odd bits of information which 
 I now possess, I owe to a hurried rush for the encyclopaedia, on 
 returning from Mount Villas." 
 
 To the secretarial and routine work of the Schools John S. 
 Rowntree gave his time and thought in the most ungrudging 
 way. He would spare no labour or pains to make every statement 
 exact and clear, and he would spend long hours in preparing 
 the Annual Reports of the Schools, seeking to make them full 
 and complete in the fewest words possible. 
 
 His sense of the high importance of educational work and the 
 greatness of the issues involved in it, lent dignity and worth to 
 its very smallest details, and made him more than wUling to spend 
 time and strength over what some might have felt mere drudgery. 
 It is calculated that during many years he could not, on an 
 average, have given less than one day a week to the service 
 of the Schools. 
 
 At the Whitsuntide gathering. May, 1907, of the Mount Old 
 Scholars' Association, the late Principal of the School, Lucy 
 Harrison, gave felicitous expression to the feeling with which 
 John S. Rowntree's work for the School was recalled by those 
 connected with it. She said : — 
 
 " There are amongst the countless people we meet in life a few 
 who, if we have any intercourse with them, do not leave us where 
 they found us ; contact with them raises our standard of character 
 and our estimate of life and duty, and ever after knowing them we, 
 perhaps unconsciously, measure ourselves and others with reference 
 to their example. Such a one was John Stephenson Rowntree. 
 
 " Since our last gathering of Old Scholars his familiar figure has 
 passed from among us, and his voice for us is silent. When once 
 more at Whitsuntide, in the old fashion, the two Schools meet in the 
 happy union which tells of loyalty to alma mater, some words, however 
 inadequate, seem called for to express the sense of loss we all feel in 
 John S. Rowntree's death ; and at the same time not less natural is 
 expression of the feeUng that his spirit lives and breathes in the life 
 of the Schools for which he worked so long and so unsparingly. 
 
MEMOIR. 21 
 
 " Both Schools enjoyed his help, but here, and to-night, perhaps 
 we may speak more especially of the Mount, for whose welfare, 
 I always thought, he manifested a peculiar care. 
 
 " Those of us who are interested (and which of us is not ?) in the 
 well-being of our School, who feel grateful for help received' within 
 its walls, who love it for what it has been, for what it is, and who 
 have worthy longings for what it may become, can never forget 
 what we owe to John Rowntree, for without his feeling for it, his 
 appreciation of its needs, the work he did for it, it could not have 
 been what it is. 
 
 "It is now more than seventeen years since I first met John 
 Rowntree, and during those years I had the opportunity of seeing 
 something of his manner of work for the Mount. He brought 
 into his labour of love the thoroughness, the conscientious, laborious 
 care which a man might give to the building up of a fortune for himself. 
 He grudged neither time nor strength, and he must many a time 
 have given up the pursuit of some fascinating hobby to labour over 
 dull details and accounts, and routine work. There were parts of 
 this work which I soon found were particularly irksome to him; 
 for instance, the going over the house at the end of the session to 
 decide where repairs were needed, and where they could be dispensed 
 with for another year. He had little interest in this, and indeed 
 greatly disliked it, but he never shirked it. This may seem a small 
 matter, but small things may become great through their treatment. 
 Along with faithfulness in small things went a most noticeable 
 determination to get at great principles and to judge of matters 
 from the highest standpoint, and with all this he was ready and 
 willing to give careful consideration to what one had to say when 
 opinions differed. 
 
 " Nor was the time actually spent in committees, and over 
 account books, over reports and correspondence, surprising as this 
 was, all that he gave. I often found that in the interval which 
 might elapse between one visit and another, the thought of the 
 School had been with him, and such searching attention had he been 
 giving to the business in hand, that when the time for decision 
 came he had weighty suggestions to offer. It seemed sometimes 
 as if he had borne the School on his heart, as a kind father thinks 
 for his child in his absence. During all the years that I knew John 
 Rowntree, his interest in the School never flagged, and we have but 
 to look round to see witnesses of his love for it. He took great interest 
 in the Ubrary and the gift of The Dictionary of National Biography 
 is only one amongst many which he made to it. The importance 
 he attached to the teaching of science was attested by his efforts to 
 procure the observatory for the School, and we must all remember 
 
22 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTIiEE. 
 
 the encouragement he gave to the girls' Natural History Exhibitions, 
 and the charming and racy little speeches he would sometimes make 
 on these occasions. 
 
 " Any record of John Rowntree would be most incomplete if 
 mention of one aspect of his work for education was omitted, I 
 mean his broad-minded view as to the higher education of women. 
 A judgment unwarped by conventionality and prejudice, and a 
 rare sense of justice made him eager to procure for women, through 
 education and training, full equality of opportunity, and led him 
 to recognise in a special manner the importance of offering to women 
 a fair field for the exercise of their energies as citizens and as Church 
 members. 
 
 " It is for these, as well as for many other reasons, not mentioned 
 in this record, that we at the Mount School and all Old Scholars, 
 feel perhaps in a unique way John S. Rowntree's death, and why in 
 this place we shall ever keep his memory green." 
 
 Not only the " rare sense of justice " to which Miss Harrison 
 alludes, but all the chivalry of his nature was enlisted on behalf 
 of the higher education of women, and particularly of women 
 teachers. He would often urge that they had fewer helps and 
 advantages than men, and he would remind Friends that " no 
 Benjamin Flounders* had yet arisen to leave £40,000 for the 
 training of young women," though the Society needed more 
 women teachers than men. 
 
 With the valued co-operation of Lydia Rous, he was the 
 mainspring of the Association for the Training of Women Teachers 
 started in 1870, and which is still carrying on its useful work. 
 
 One of his coadjutors writes : — 
 
 " Those who have had the privilege of working with him upon 
 Education Committees know something of his zeal in this direction, 
 and how, whUst pleading for a sound practical basis, he was ever 
 ready to take advantage of new lines of development which he saw 
 would be for the good of the students and for their usefuhiess in the 
 future. If he could not acquiesce in a fresh proposal, he was always 
 
 * Benjamin Flounders, of Yarm, died in 1 846. He bequeathed money for 
 the trainmg of young men as teachers in the schools and families of the 
 Society of Friends The Flounders CoUege or Institute was founded in 
 1848. Its original home was at Ackworth, but it was removed to Leeds 
 m 1894, where it now serves as a Hall of Residence for voune men in con- 
 nection with the University of Leeds. ^ ""B men m con 
 
MEMOIR. 23 
 
 ready to re-consider his decision, or to waive his own judgment 
 if he found that others, in touch with present-day requirements, 
 favoured some new departure." 
 
 As this writer shows us, John S. Rowntree was always ready 
 to accord to others the liberty of opinion which he claimed for 
 himself. 
 
 One wish that he had at heart stiU awaits realisation. Could 
 not Friends do anything, he would ask, to help masters in our 
 Schools to find some other vocation when they had been teaching 
 long enough ? 
 
 He would point out that the Church of England can easily 
 find honourable posts for such men ; and though Friends have not 
 corresponding facilities at their disposal, he believed, nevertheless, 
 that something might be done to meet this real need adequately 
 and worthily. " Difficulties," he would say, " exist to be over- 
 come." 
 
 When acting as Treasurer, John S. Rowntree considered it a 
 part of his duty to press the claim of the Schools to liberal 
 support upon the attention of Friends. He would point out that 
 those who help forward the work of education are, at the same 
 time, helping forward whatever form of service for man they may 
 have most at heart. Those who support our Schools, he urged, 
 are also supporting home and foreign missions, and every form 
 of human service to which Friends are or may be called, by 
 preparing efficient and qualified workers. 
 
 For many years he was one of the Flounders Trustees, and 
 later he served as Treasurer on the Friends' Education Committee. 
 His increasing knowledge and experience of the educational 
 policy of Friends enabled him to voice its needs and aspirations 
 with authority and influence. 
 
 As already stated, J. S. Rowntree's work for education, one 
 only of many lines of service, was entered upon very soon after 
 the death of his father, an event which had a profound influence 
 upon him. It added new sacredness to duty, deepened his 
 convictions, quickened his sympathies and awakened new per- 
 ceptions and sensibilities. In his deep personal sense of loss 
 
24 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 and sorrow, his thoughts often turned to one and another who 
 might be missing some joy or privilege which they could no longer 
 hope for. His heart went out to them in sympathy, and led him 
 to do himself what he knew his father would have done for them. 
 To give one instance : in these busiest of years, alongside with 
 efforts to reform the constitutional procedure of his Religious 
 Society, or to advocate a truer and more progressive policy, he 
 would not forget to meet some young cousins, orphaned children, 
 on their way to school through York. He would take them 
 out to lunch in the City, and give them a good time somewhere, 
 perhaps in the Museum Gardens. He would tell them stories 
 and facts of interest about St. Mary's Abbey which have been 
 remembered by them ever since, before setting them forward 
 on their way with gladdened hearts and lightened spirits ; and 
 this he continued to do at the begiiming and end of every vacation 
 tiQ the school years came to an end. 
 
 Many now can recall such instances of the " httle, nameless, 
 unremembered acts of kindness and of love," which Wordsworth 
 tells us are the " best portion of a good man's life " : imre- 
 membered by himself, but never forgotten by some whose lives 
 were the richer for them. It was part of the large completeness 
 of his mind and of his practical nature that he could always see 
 and feel the value of the smallest details as a part of the whole of 
 life and service. Anything that could give help or pleasure 
 seemed to him abundantly worth while, and he could never doubt 
 that " what does good for a moment does good for ever," living 
 on in some human heart to repeat itself perhaps in the 
 future. 
 
 His call to the ministry had come to him before this time, and 
 after his voice was first heard in meetings for worship, he had 
 known the encouragement and strength of his father's S5mipathy. 
 One who remembers his earliest ministry says it was fresh and 
 thoughtful, "but he was at first rather hesitating and self- 
 distrustful till help came to him through finding that his friends 
 felt and acknowledged the gift he had received." 
 
MEMOIR. 35 
 
 He was recorded a minister in 1864. His own share of 
 ministerial service gave him a deep sympathy with that of others, 
 both older and younger, and he did not fail in showing it. 
 
 An esteemed minister was visiting York on religious service 
 about this time, under a secret feeling of deep inward discourage- 
 ment. She told afterwards of a walk through the city with John 
 S. Rowntree, who escorted her from his mother's house to the 
 evening meeting. With sympathetic insight he had probably 
 divined her depression, and it nerved him to break through his 
 natural shyness and reserve, and to tell her how, years before, in 
 a " family visit," some words of hers had gone home to his heart 
 with helpful power and been just the message he needed. As she 
 listened her sadness and depression passed away, and she entered 
 the meeting with a song of rejoicing in her heart, strong once 
 more to do her part and to speak the message given her — ^but 
 this he did not know until long afterwards when she had passed 
 beyond the hindering power of discouragement. 
 
 Another time, a girl visitor, walking home with him after a 
 Preparative Meeting, at which the " General Advices " had 
 been read, made critical remarks on what seemed to her the rather 
 alarming and uniUuminating character of the Advice " to those 
 contemplating marriage." Instantly divining, beneath her 
 intentional lightness of tone, a real desire for some guiding prin- 
 ciples, he began to say what he thought these were, and the task 
 occupied him all the rest of the walk, to the inward delight of his 
 visitor, who had received, though he never knew it, just the help 
 she was needing, but could not have asked for. 
 
 He did not always respond so quickly when problems and 
 difficulties were started in the course of a conversation. It was 
 not uncommon for anything of this character, even a direct 
 question, to be received at the moment with what, to anyone 
 who did not know him, would have seemed a chilling silence, per- 
 haps followed by an entire change of subject. 
 
 The questioner who knew anything of his mental habits 
 would simply wait in quiet expectation, and presently, perhaps 
 another day, after his mind had had time to dwell upon the point. 
 
26 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 he would revert to it .himself, and bring the illuminating results 
 of much patient thought to bear upon it. 
 
 Some of us recall various talks with him on the subject of 
 personal guidance. He used to say that from early life he had 
 made it a practice to do what he was asked to do in the way of 
 service, if he felt this possible, and there was no manifest reason 
 against it. And in acting thus he had afterwards reason to 
 believe that he had been divinely guided. 
 
 It has been acutely said that "whole centuries of moral 
 evolution " lie between the attitude of mind of the man who says : 
 " Some one ought to do it, but why should I ? " and that of 
 him who says : " Some one ought to do it, so why not I ? " 
 
 This was the question that John S. Rowntree was always 
 ready to ask himself when a real need appealed to him. He 
 distrusted the guidance of impulse, unless it had the sanction of 
 reason and judgment behind it. He believed that many 
 make mistakes or miss opportunities by waiting for some strong 
 inward impression which ought not to be needed, and may never 
 be given. His type of mind was very different from that of the 
 Missionary Coillard,* but in this respect their experience was the 
 same. Coillard was sure that he was guided but only very rarely 
 was he conscious, at the time, of guidance. 
 
 To one considering an important decision, John S. Rowntree 
 wrote : — 
 
 " In decisions like that you have to make, it is observable how, 
 if one desires honestly to do the right thing, the path after awhile 
 seems to open out pretty clearly from that which at first was a per- 
 plexing maze." 
 
 In these earlier years of happy married hfe, as his children 
 came to gladden the home, each new relation brought with it some 
 fresh revelation of truth, and out of the new joys grew new claims 
 and duties. Beyond his home, widening paths of service opened 
 out before him. He was often asked to give lectures and addresses. 
 
 * Coillard of the Zambesi. The lives of Francois and Christine Coillard 
 of the Paris Missionary Society, in South and Central Africa iSiS-iqoa 
 By C. H. Mackintosh. s y 4- 
 
MEMOIR. 27 
 
 A spirited and effective reply to Macaulay's caricature of George 
 Fox was the subject of his first pubhshed lecture. His addresses 
 and pamphlets, which were always enriched by much happy his- 
 torical illustration, reveal his mastery of his subject and his 
 power of clear presentation. His style of writing may have been 
 influenced by his early love for Isaac Taylor's books. It was, 
 perhaps, more remarkable for lucidity, point and dignity than 
 for the charm and brightness which often distinguished his 
 impromptu speeches. 
 
 But it is probable that his unadorned style of writing grew out 
 of something fine in his nature, his perfect faith in the power 
 and sufficiency of any truth or fact to make its own impression, 
 however simply or even barely stated. It was a part of his ab- 
 solute sincerity of mind that he never tried to dress anything up, 
 to embellish or adorn. His one aim and care was to find out the 
 innermost truth of whatever he was considering, and then to let 
 it speak for itself. 
 
 He was often asked to speak at Adult School meetings in other 
 parts of Yorkshire, and it was a service which he loved. 
 
 As already mentioned, he had, in 1851, begun to teach a class 
 of boys in Hope Street. After a time men also showed a wish to 
 come, and a separate class for them was arranged, of which 
 he was the leader. 
 
 In 1857 it became necessary to move into larger rooms in Lady 
 Peckitt's Yard, and the School grew rapidly in numbers. In 
 course of time it branched out in many directions, and in 1907 
 it celebrated its Jubilee.* Some men who were in John S. Rown- 
 tree's class at the beginning are living now, and wonderful stories 
 are still told of the first tea meeting. It must have been a lively 
 time. There was a great deal of speech making after tea, and one 
 of the guests was irrepressible. He was the young teacher's 
 former head-master at school, and instead of making the speech 
 
 * See The Story of the York Adult School from the commencement to the 
 year 1907. By Frederic John Gillman. With an introduction by Joseph 
 Rowntree. 
 
28 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 expected of him he would talk of his old pupil, to the great delight 
 of the men, and the great embarrassment of their teacher, and he 
 wound up his address, at last, with words spoken of a king by his 
 tutor, in which the ring of happy pride and satisfaction is still 
 remembered, " / taughi the boy I " One would give something now 
 for a fuU report of this speech. 
 
 Vivid memories stiU remam of the graphic interest of J. S. 
 Rowntree's early Adult School lessons, and his care to make 
 everything so clear that aU could understand. He would take 
 pains to use simple words, and if long words came into the lesson 
 he would make sure that the meaning was really grasped. He 
 followed the Socratic method, sometimes questioning an idea 
 into the minds of his class and then questioning it out again. 
 The plan was successful with his men, but on one occasion it 
 entirely failed to work. He was taking a class of women in 
 another town and as he questioned they sat silent and 
 unresponsive. "Why are you so quiet?" he asked, "Well, 
 sir," said one, "you see it's this way. You do all the 
 speaking, and we does all the thinking" [ Whenever possible 
 he used pictures or diagrams, or he would bring with 
 him some object such as a locust, or an Eastern lamp, to illustrate 
 the lesson. No one could feel more strongly than he did the 
 difference between theology and life — ^the merely traditional creed 
 of head and memory and the religion of heart and conduct. His 
 care was to make the central meaning and truth of a Bible passage 
 clear, and then to press home the practical applications of the 
 truth itself, not his own opinions about the truth, or about the 
 way in which it might be theologically stated. " It was delight- 
 ful," one man says, " to hear him talk about Old Testament 
 characters, he made them so wonderfully real." It is remem- 
 bered still how he used the story of Moses and Aaron to illustrate 
 " the difference between talking and working," and to emphasise 
 the value of the quiet, faithful service of those who have " no 
 gift of talk." The thoughtful men in his class found that difficult 
 questions and perplexing problems were always honestly faced. 
 No attempt was made to avoid them, or to explain what could 
 
MEMOIR. 29 
 
 not be satisfactorily explained. At a Conference of Teachers 
 held in Birmingham in 1867, J. S. Rowntree remarked, 
 
 " I believe that one of the leading features of the time in which 
 we Uve is the disposition to endeavour to explain everything. . . . 
 I think it is of importance that we should be willing to admit that 
 there are many things we can never know in this Ufe. . . . How- 
 ever highly endowed a teacher may be, he wiU frequently have 
 to say, ' I don't know, and I never shaU know.' We carry 
 in our own persons an inexplicable mystery : we cannot 
 tell, for instance, how the mind is joined to the body. It 
 would be well to say that there are mysteries we cannot explain, 
 and I am convinced this is the way to deal with certain classes of 
 minds, as it was the way in which the Lord Himself dealt with 
 Job — showing him that he was surrounded with mysteries in the 
 outward creation which he could not solve ; by which means he was 
 at last led to confide in the goodness of God." 
 
 His own practice in teaching is also illustrated in some remarks 
 he made at another Teachers' Conference at Darlington (August, 
 1874), where he was one of the Secretaries. 
 
 " A great deal of the freshness of our teaching depends upon 
 the use of subjects for lessons which may arise almost incidentally 
 — as for instance, the occurrence of anniversary days. . . . 
 I have been frequently employed in giving a lesson on Slavery, com- 
 memorating the abolition of negro slavery in the British Colonies. 
 . . . In many towns the occurrence of the races furnishes a good 
 subject for a useful lesson the week before they occur." 
 
 Joshua Rowntree recalls a fine address delivered about this 
 time to an Adult School Council Meeting. 
 
 " John S. Rowntree told how on his journey to Scarborough 
 he had passed the ruins of Kirkham Abbey, and the sight had set 
 him pondering on the causes of permanence and of decay in human 
 institutions, and he had asked himself, Had the Adult School move- 
 ment the elements of permanence within itself ? He dwelt on the 
 decay of vital religion under the predominance of ecclesiasticism, 
 on the fettering of the freedom of the glad tidings to mankind by the 
 laws and traditions of the Churches, and then, almost suddenly, 
 turning to the decadence of Mechanics' Institutes in our day he 
 ascribed this largely to the fact that they had ruled out religion and 
 politics, the most engrossing of all themes to men ; and finished with 
 a powerful plea for liberty and growth in the measure of the stature 
 of the fulness of Christ." 
 
30 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 After he had removed to Mount Villas he always, if possible, 
 took flowers down to the class to be distributed afterwards, and 
 these gave great pleasure. They were often gathered by his 
 children who, as they grew old enough, Uked to go to the School 
 with their father. Once every summer, the Sunday morning 
 lesson was given in his own garden. 
 
 One week-day gathering of the class is still vividly remem- 
 bered. After tea, and an enjoyable time in the garden at Mount 
 ViUas, John S. Rowntree took all his guests, in a long procession 
 of cabs, down to an exhibition then open in the City, and went 
 round with them, pointing out or explaining objects of interest. 
 
 What his men came to know of his every-day life and interests 
 strengthened the impression made in class on Sundays. 
 
 An old Adult Scholar says : — 
 
 " He was one of the few men I have met in the journey of life 
 whose living pressed home his teaching, and you always felt that it 
 was safe to follow both." 
 
 He had the happy gift of seeing latent capabilities of power 
 and service, and of knowing how to bring them out. He would 
 call attention beforehand to an opportunity which was likely 
 to arise, or he would suggest lines of helpful service to one and 
 another in his class, which they would never have thought of for 
 themselves, but which were to prove rich in fruitfulness through 
 long years to come. One man, thus started by him on a career 
 of much quiet usefulness, now says gratefully : — 
 
 " I owe everything to Mr. Rowntree. Humanly speaking I 
 shouldn't have been any use in the world if it hadn't been for him. 
 When he was taken away it was like taking the ground from 
 under my feet." 
 
 Behind all his other work lay the daily responsibilities of his 
 business and his relations to his employes. Men who worked 
 under him some forty years ago or more have told of the happy 
 influence he exerted on their lives. One writes : — 
 
 " Few men that I have known, have revealed so nearly the Christ- 
 life. I loved him both as a master and a man. I would to God 
 there were more such. His Christian forbearance and longsuffering 
 
MEMOIR. 31 
 
 to even unworthy employes at the Pavement used to call forth 
 almost wonder, and I can only look back upon it with the deepest 
 admiration. I think he comes to me more often than any man in 
 my dreams. His sense of humour was so keen and his wit so ready. 
 I would have liked to see him once more to thank him for the goodness 
 always extended to me, and for the inspiration of his life which is 
 ever with me." 
 
 Another Friend who worked under him for more than six 
 
 years, writes : — 
 
 " What struck me most was his great spirituality and con- 
 scientiousness, his strong common-sense, his generosity and his very 
 deep affection. . . He seemed like a kind parent to us." 
 
 One daily privilege and pleasure was a visit to his ftiother. 
 All who knew Sarah Rowntree, could endorse her grand-daughter's 
 description of 
 
 " her loving and gracious personality, the good judgment which 
 made her counsel sought and valued by her children and friends, and 
 the gentleness which made her great." 
 
 The late Isaac Brown, of Kendal, formerly Principal of the 
 Flounders College, whose inspiring influence and ministry many 
 wiU remember, wrote at a later period of Sarah Rowntree's life 
 as " one of the purest and holiest " he had known. 
 
 " None," he said, " can have been long in her company without 
 being sensible of the nearness of her walk with her Lord, and of her 
 intercourse with Him." 
 
 " Nor can I ever forget," he added, " that it was when enjoying, 
 with other dear friends, the hospitality of her home, that in early 
 wakeful hours, it was clearly given to me that I was that morning, 
 for the first time in meeting, to witness to the redeeming work of the 
 Lord Jesus." 
 
 Through ten years of the loneliness of widowhood Sarah 
 Rowntree had drunk deeply from heavenly springs of strength 
 and comfort, and her heart went out to her friends, and especially 
 to the sick and lonely, in loving desires for their encouragement, 
 and for the deepening and enrichment of their spiritual hfe. She 
 wished to come into closer touch and fellowship with them 
 individually, and to show something of the S3mipathy she felt 
 by visiting them in their homes. About the same time her son 
 
32 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 had the impression that a similar service, but of a more extended 
 scope, was required of him. He felt that something more was 
 called for than public and congregational ministry, something 
 more personal and individual, and it was a great help and satis- 
 faction, to mother and son, to believe that a part, at least, of 
 this service might be undertaken jointly. Both felt strongly 
 the supreme need for absolute loyalty and self-dedication, of 
 the spirit which longs to give " the utmost for the highest " on 
 the part of all who would be true followers of Christ, and do His 
 work in the world. Sarah Rowntree's character and experience 
 had specially quaUfied her to give winning and encouraging 
 expression to this feeling, and to dwell upon the privilege of service 
 for others, even should it be at times a service of suffering. They 
 were warmly encouraged by their own Monthly Meeting, held 
 on March loth, Z869, to fulfil this mission, which took a year to 
 accompUsh. Sarah Rowntree joined in the visits paid to Friends 
 in York, which were of " a social as well as of a religious character." 
 
 Her son visited aU the families of Friends in the Monthly 
 Meeting, pajdng over 200 visits, which were most warmly and 
 kindly received, and in addition he held several specially arranged 
 meetings. He always felt afterwards that he could understand 
 much better than before the special needs of those to whom he 
 was so often called to minister. 
 
 John S. Rowntree was the more able to enter into S3mipathy 
 with the lives of others to whom he was called to speak through 
 his own experience of a happy home life, its joys and cares and 
 responsibilities. 
 
 He had an almost unconscious power of rule, and it was a rule 
 of love. One of his daughters writes, " His word was always 
 law and from our earliest years there was never any thought of 
 disputing it. When we were children, a very few words of 
 disapproval from him were instantly effective. He hardly 
 ever used strong language about anything, and this habitual 
 restraint gave added force to what he said." 
 
 His wife was his faithful helper in everything, sharing his 
 thoughts and farthering his plans. Even more than he realised 
 
MEMOIR. 33 
 
 at the time, he depended upon her unfailing sympathy and prac- 
 tical judgment. 
 
 Eveiywhere in her home the warmth and sunshine of the 
 mother's love was felt, the sunshine which helps all best things 
 to grow. It was the influence of a love as strong as it was tender, 
 as winning in its methods as it was rich in practical wisdom. 
 
 Sundays brought special privileges. There was " a Sunday 
 cupboard " in the drawing-room, full of dehghtful things, stories, 
 pictures and games, even toys for the very little ones, which were 
 never brought out on any other occasion, and however full of 
 engagements week-days might be the children looked forward to 
 good times and happy leisure with their parents on Sundays when 
 visitors often came to add to the enjoyment of the day. 
 
 Meal times were delightfully bright and happy, and the 
 children were encouraged to join in the conversation. Their 
 father had known what it was, as a boy at school, to submit to 
 enforced silence at meals, and had not found the practice tended^ 
 to lessen his early shyness about entering into ordinary conver- 
 sation, though — strange to say — books were allowed, and he 
 solaced himself by reading through Gibbon's Decline and Fall 
 of the Roman Empire during the silent dinner hour. 
 
 No one dreamed of reading books at his table ! As a rule 
 there was too much to talk about. Should conversation flag, 
 however, he would suddenly ask a child an unexpected question, 
 perhaps about something of which the child knew nothing what- 
 ever. But it was an understood thing that some sort of a reply 
 must be made, and bright encouragement, or merry laughter, 
 would greet any honest attempt at an answer. For John S. 
 Rowntree had one point of agreement with his polar opposite — 
 Gilbert Chesterton. He beUeved that " what is worth doing at 
 aU is worth doing badly " — at first. In their turn, of course, 
 the children would demand and receive an answer to satisfy their 
 newly-awakened interest or curiosity. 
 
 In the summer time the garden was an unfailing source of 
 pleasure, and the habits of the various animals kept were as real 
 an interest to the father as to the children. 
 
34 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 One little child was for several years much of an invalid, 
 claiming his mother's tenderest care and thought, and bringing 
 into the Uves of the other children an unconscious training 
 in considerateness and syinpathy. 
 
 On his account, specially, the busy mother rejoiced in the 
 acquisition of a pony phaeton, and for several years shew as in the 
 habit of driving the little ones out herself, to their great enjoy- 
 ment and also her own. 
 
 With the suddenness of an earthquake the happy home life 
 was shattered. In Jtdy, 1875, Elizabeth H. Rowntree died from 
 the effects of a carriage accident at Ingleton. With his eight 
 children, the father found himself bereft, and in the midst of 
 surrounding beauty and the bright summer sunshine he was 
 plunged into dark depths of sorrow and desolation. 
 
 Human sjmipathy did what it could. It poured in from all 
 sides, from fellow-citizens, and many who were almost unknown 
 to him, as well as from Ms personal friends, cind those who were 
 most near and dear ; and to the end of his life he remembered 
 it with thankfulness. His mother's tender comprehending 
 sympathy was a wonderful strength.and stay both to him and to 
 his elder daughters. 
 
 But as each day brought an added realisation of change and 
 loss, felt with such keenness, also, on his children's account, his 
 sensitive heart was torn not with grief only, but with the pangs 
 of a questioning which tested the very foundations of his faith. 
 
 The dark mystery of sorrow seemed to fold him round and 
 once more the old question arose. Why are sorrow and suffering 
 permitted ? His heart cried out for an answer— not for the first 
 time only. There had been periods when the sorrows of others 
 had forced the question home before. In 1869, he had written 
 to one of his friends : — 
 
 " I have known what it was for the mysteries of the divine 
 government to press upon me by day and by night in a way I cannot 
 express." 
 
 Again and again the question Why ? would arise within him. 
 
MEMOIR. 35 
 
 Was it for his personal discipline ? he asked, and might have 
 added, like Lowell in a like bereavement — 
 
 " How was I worthy so divine a loss ? 
 
 Deepening my midnights, kindling all my moms ; 
 Why waste such precious wood to make my cross ; 
 Such far-sought roses for my crown of thorns ? " 
 
 No ! Such a solution, he felt, whatever partial truth there 
 might be in it, was miserably inadequate. " No man liveth to 
 himself," or suffers for himself alone. There must be a larger 
 solution than any which concerns himself only. There came to 
 him a fuller grasp of the meaning of the Divine self-sacrifice, a 
 new sense of the Love which " spared not his own Son but 
 delivered him up for us aU," and he felt that for man also suffering 
 may be the service to which he is called, and in some unknown 
 way beyond his power to understand, others must be the richer 
 through it. 
 
 For, though no answer came to the question " Why ? " there 
 came something better — an assurance that whatever the reason 
 might be. Love lay behind it, that Love, only Love was ordering 
 his path, and caring for him and his ; and he arose from the depths 
 to share with others the comfort he had found. 
 
 A cousin writes : — 
 
 " It was some time after this great bereavement before his voice 
 was again heard in the ministry. He rose first with the question of 
 the prisoner in Machaerus, ' Art thou he that shall come, or look we 
 for another ? ' It so happened that John Bright was in the meeting 
 that Simday morning. In coming away he said to a friend, ' I knew 
 that was what he must have been going through.' " 
 
 Many will recall the added power that seemed to go with his 
 words after this time, and the intensity of feeling with which he 
 would speak, as one who had proved it, of " everlasting conso- 
 lation," through " our Lord Jesus Christ Himself," or dwell upon 
 the question — and its answer — " Lord, to whom shall we go ? 
 Thou hast the words of eternal life." 
 
 But even so, there still were times when natural sorrow would 
 have its way. He was very human, and could not always rise 
 
36 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 above it, nor was he able to assume a cheerfulness he did not feel. 
 A constitutional lack of natural buoyancy and elasticity of spirit, 
 along with the effects of the severe nervous shock of his tragic 
 loss, had probably much to do with his depression at times. 
 But he would not let it hinder his work. His quickened sym- 
 pathies went out towards others in bereavement, and he was 
 always ready to show it. For he reahsed increasingly and would 
 urge upon his hearers, that experience of sorrow or suffering 
 brings with it a new stewardship — that there is no sadder thing in 
 Ufe than a wasted sorrow. 
 
 Probably few ministers amongst Friends have attended 
 funerals more often than he did, and many will never forget his 
 living words of help on these occasions. In a letter dated from 
 Harrogate, September, 1876, it is stated that John S. Rowntree 
 had come over to attend a funeral, the third that week, on suc- 
 cessive days, at which he had been present, in different parts 
 of the country. The writer felt that through his own great 
 sorrow he had " gained much in depth of power to comfort." 
 
 It was a very bracing kind of comfort, though so tenderly and 
 sympathetically given. It dwelt upon the gain of loss, the 
 " treasures of darkness" to be found in the depths, — the service 
 of suffering, and the added power of ministry to others that it 
 might bring ; and its influence was to draw away from thoughts 
 of self and personal loss, to a sense of the immense need and 
 sorrow of the world around us, and the blessed privilege of being 
 able in any way to minister to this need. 
 
 John S. Rowntree's early ministry was that of a yoimg man, 
 and naturally it made a special appeal to other young men. 
 Whilst from the first it had the power which comes from deep 
 conviction, it was fresh and unconventional, and perfectly natural 
 and human. It was full of illustration drawn from his own 
 observation, reading and thought in a way which at that time 
 was unusual amongst Friends. 
 
 One who often heard him in these early years, says : — 
 
 " John S. Rowntree touched very many of us at several points 
 in our lives ; but those who were boys and young men at York in 
 
MEMOIR. 37 
 
 the early years of his exercise of the ministry would probably all 
 agree that this had been his most potent influence for good upon 
 their modes of thought and upon their lives. 
 
 " I do not think that I could better express the relationship of 
 his ministry to that generally current in the day of which I speak, 
 than by comparing it with the poetry of Wordsworth in its relation- 
 ship to the poetry of the immediately preceding time. For it was 
 direct, fuU of human interest, and appealed to the head as well as to 
 the heart. Several of his addresses have come back to mind within 
 the last few days with something of the force with which they were 
 spoken." 
 
 Others can say just the same. For though John S. Rowntree's 
 sermons were not always perfect in their dehvery, though they 
 were often marked by a shght hesitation, and were not free from 
 mannerisms, yet there was a compelling power, a strength of grip 
 in them which took such hold of the minds of some who heard, 
 that it has been impossible to forget them. 
 
 A friend recalls a sermon he heard as a schoolboy in York, 
 between 1861 and 1863.. He writes : — 
 
 " I think he then spoke from the side of the Meeting-house. 
 His sermons were unusual in character and eminently practical. 
 My chief recollection is of one on commercial integrity.* It 
 must have required some courage I think, at that date, for a 
 young man in a large and critical meeting to handle unusual topics 
 in this way." 
 
 After he was " recorded " in 1864, he usually sat in the 
 ministers' gallery. There he faced the two great Schools of boys 
 and girls who, to him, represented the future of the Society of 
 Friends, and their presence was a continual appeal and inspira- 
 tion. 
 
 There was a sense of living reality about his sermons. They 
 kept close to the facts of life, making it clear that spiritual truth 
 is no mere assertion, that it is verified in human history and 
 experience. They were marked by sobriety of thought and 
 feeling. He climbed his heights step by step, just as most of us 
 
 * Another hearer remembers this sermon, and that one point dwelt on 
 was the importance of sending in true Income Tax returns. 
 
38 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 must do : he was not borne to their summits by any sudden flight 
 of glorious intuition. 
 
 His preaching set forth Christianity as an inward life — a life 
 of trust in Christ and loyalty to Him as the revelation of the 
 Father, and Redeemer of men. 
 
 This conception of religion as inward and spiritual, as distinct 
 from the rites and forms in which it has been embodied, and from 
 its verbal wrappings in theological formulas, kept him from 
 dwelling much on abstract doctrines and definitions. He had too 
 strong a sense of their partial and changing nature. To him 
 Truth was so vast, so many-sided, that no theological creed could 
 possibly express it fully. He would grasp the essential, the 
 innermost spirit of a doctrine, and present this as simply and 
 livingly as he could. His aim was to preach Christ Himself, not 
 any theory about Him. 
 
 His sermons were distinguished not only by their reality but 
 by their wide outlook. When he spoke of the present, the sense 
 of both past and future seemed always with him. " Loving those 
 roots that feed us from the past," he listened to " the voice of 
 days of old and days to be," to use words he once quoted. He 
 would urge upon his hearers that their experiences, their diffi- 
 culties and temptations, their sorrows and their joys were no new 
 thing. They had come in like manner, to others before them, 
 right down the ages, and as the Eternal Father had cared for, 
 guided and disciplined His children in the past, so He is doing 
 and will do, now, and in days to come. He was continually 
 drawing lessons of warning, of guidance and of hope from the 
 history of the past : and as his hearers listened there would often 
 come a sense as of being out in the open air, in wide spaces of 
 time and thought, and life would seem more full of high meaning 
 and great possibilities. 
 
 " If every book is good to read which puts us in a working 
 mood," the sermon must be good to listen to which stimulates 
 the desire to act on its practical guidance and to follow the ideal 
 it upholds ; and this stimulus John S. Rowntree's sermons would 
 often bring to those who heard them. 
 
MEMOIR. 39 
 
 Again, his sermons were distinguished by their completeness. 
 In the first place the subject was dealt with in a strikingly com- 
 plete way in its varied aspects ; and then its practical application 
 to very differing conditions, in age, circumstance and experience, 
 was presented with equal completeness. He seemed to have an 
 unusual sense of the needs and difficulties, the temptations and the 
 opportunities of all, — of the young, the middle-aged and the old, 
 and would speak to each in turn. One outcome of his complete- 
 ness of sympathy, of his sense of oneness with others in life and 
 service, was his habit of happy reference to what had been said 
 by previous speakers in the meeting. If addresses had seemed 
 disconnected he would discover and bring out some underlying 
 unity, and so, either in preaching or in prayer, draw the vocal 
 service of the meeting into a beautiful harmony. 
 
 Another way in which his completeness of sympathy was often 
 shown was in the honour which he rendered to all hidden and 
 humble service. He had an immense sense of the value of this, 
 and often spoke of it with a reverence which was full of 
 encouragement and stimulus. He would dwell on the thought 
 that 
 
 " The healing of the world 
 Is in its nameless saints ; " 
 
 or he would quote the concluding words of MiMlemarch — 
 
 " The growing good of the world is partly dependent on un- 
 historic acts ; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they 
 might have been, is half owing to the number who hved faithfully a 
 hidden Ufe, and rest in unvisited tombs." 
 
 And finally, the completeness of his sermons was shown in 
 their faithfulness. His words were searching and convicting as 
 well as encouraging and stimulating. Probably many a hearer 
 might have said, 
 
 " He would send me home detected in my inmost infirmities, 
 unmasked to myself, humbled with the conviction of sin and inspired 
 with the assurance of victory." 
 
40 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 Sometimes he would dwell on specific duties, and present true 
 ideals of thought and speech and conduct. To make his meaning 
 unmistakable he would occasionally give an example of an exact 
 contrast to the ideal he was setting forth, but it was quite possible 
 for him to quote an unsatisfactory or queer expression without 
 distracting the attention, even of his younger hearers, from the 
 main point of his address ; or detracting from the solemnity 
 befitting the occasion. 
 
 He would quote proverbs, too, effectively. A friend recalls 
 an interesting example of this : — 
 
 " Perhaps no address of his ever helped me so much as one on how 
 to take failures. I don't remember his text — perhaps he hadn't 
 one — ^but he quoted the proverb : ' One for the worm and one for the 
 crow, one to perish and one to grow.' The farmer found it so. His 
 seeds did not all come up, and he planted accordingly. In wild nature 
 it was even more so. The crow that we saw took one, and the 
 worm that we did not see took another, but taking the average of all 
 faithful sowing, the fourth came up. The wayside may take one, 
 and the rock another, and the briars another, yet some will fall on 
 good ground, and bring forth some thirty, some sixty, and some a 
 hundred-fold. If one seed does not come up, plant another. To 
 those who go on doing what God tells them there is no real failure. 
 They may not see success, but success is none the less sure. 
 
 " ' He always wins who sides with God.' I am not sure that 
 he quoted the words, but he left the thought and of course I have not 
 given his words, only my recollections." 
 
 Often some passing incident would form the starting-point of 
 his sermon. One race week in York he rose with the words 
 " There shall be upon the beUs of the horses holiness unto the 
 Lord," instantly securing the expectant attention of his younger 
 hearers, and proceeding to show how it is the spirit in which 
 anything is done which makes it beautiful and holy, or the reverse, 
 and dwelling on the warning lessons to be learned from the 
 degeneration in practices, innocent or even noble in their origin, 
 when a profane or worldly spirit has taken hold of them. 
 
 "Nothing was too homely or commonplace," says The British 
 Friend, "to be worked up into illuminating and comforting thoughts; 
 a chance conversation overheard in the street, the quiet caused 
 
MEMOIR. 41 
 
 by a sudden fall of snow, the passing conditions of the social and 
 political world. Few preachers have manifested an equal gift for 
 drawing spiritual lessons, without undue straining, from outward 
 facts. This unconventional character caused his ministry to be 
 remembered when much else passed altogether into oblivion." 
 
 One who heard him often says his sermons were 
 
 " always so humble in their tone. He never hammered in what he 
 wanted to impress on the mind, he was never dictatorial." 
 
 Another friend writes : — 
 
 " John S. Rowntree is one of those whose strongly uttered 
 convictions in our Meeting in regard to the present power of the 
 Risen Christ, and perhaps even more still as to the certain hope of 
 a blessed hfe beyond this earthly one have done much in past years 
 to confirm my own faith when it was not so firmly established on the 
 Rock as it is to-day. 
 
 " I should like to say how much I have been helped by his sermons 
 in Meeting. He appealed to me as few, in fact as none of the older 
 generation of Friends did. I suppose it was because of his great 
 sympathy with younger men. He seemed to ' keep the young 
 generations in haU,' and didn't appear to be frightened as so many 
 men of his years were, at their di£5culties. If one spoke in his presence 
 one felt that he was sympathising with one and encouraging one all 
 the time. 
 
 " He made young men feel that he discriminated between truth 
 ascertained, and truth merely asserted, and drew them to him instead 
 of repelling them, as the dogmatist does and must ever do with 
 thoughtful minds. They saw that he did not advocate blind faith, 
 but one which appealed both to the understanding and the heart." 
 
 Such a ministry as his would have been impossible without 
 much careful thought and preparation. He had a strong sense 
 of the need for this, the need, not of prepared sermons, but of 
 preparation of heart and mind for the ministry, through constant 
 study of Scripture, and the endeavour, by prayerful thought and 
 meditation, to grasp its inmost meaning. He would dwell long 
 and earnestly on any passage that had specially struck him, con- 
 versing with others about it, and noting how it harmonised with 
 human experience in the past, and the result would appear in 
 some exposition, always with a practical bearing on the needs 
 of the day. 
 
42 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 " Such," says one of his hearers, " was a sermon I well remember 
 on Colossians iii. 1-2 : 'If then ye were raised together with Christ, 
 seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated on the right 
 hand of God. Set your mind on the things that are above ; ' (R.V.) 
 when words so familiar, that one had only a vague idea of their 
 meaning, were lit up as many conditions were spoken to, and it was 
 explained what would be meant to each by " seeking first the things 
 that are above." It was wonderfully feeding, and this is only one 
 example of what was a frequent experience." 
 
 He could not have spoken to so " many conditions " had he 
 not been able to enter as fuUy, with glad sjmnpathy, into the joys 
 of others, as to feel with them in their sorrows. He was a welcome 
 guest at weddings, and some of his addresses on these occasions 
 are still recalled for the power and beauty of the ideal he set 
 forth. 
 
 Another way in which John S. Rowntree served the Society 
 of Friends during these years was by his editorship of The Friend, 
 which he had imdertaken at the beginning of 1875. 
 
 Perhaps it wjis well for him during the saddened and lonely 
 evenings when his older children were away at school, that he was 
 compelled to devote his attention to this work, and give guiding 
 thought to the affairs of the Society. He would occasionally 
 finish up an editorial with some felicitous and effective quotation 
 which would remain in the reader's memory long after the rest 
 of the article was forgotten. In reference to some dismal pre- 
 diction that the Society of Friends was on its way to speedy 
 extinction he voiced the rejoinder it should be able to give, in the 
 words of Nehemiah — " I am doing a great work so that I caimot 
 come down. Why should the work cease ? " 
 
 Joshua Rowntree, who had kindly helped at a time of special 
 strain, writes : — 
 
 " He was a delightful Editor to work with, always taking wide 
 views from the high levels on which his mind invariably worked, 
 and yet with strong convictions and a clear policy before him — no 
 littleness. 
 
 " My recollections are that he carried The Friend through very 
 evenly. He rather Uked writing leaders and they were and are always 
 worth reading." 
 
MEMOIR. 43 
 
 A new hope and happiness came into John S. Rowntree's life 
 and home through his marriage, in 1878, to Helen Doncaster, a 
 cousin and intimate friend of the late EUzabeth H. Rowntree, 
 and one who had known and loved her children from their infancy. 
 Again it was given him to feel the joy and power of fellowship 
 with a true-hearted and loving wife, well qualified to enter with 
 him into widening paths of public service, and strong to sustain 
 and uphold in every time of trial. 
 
 In the great peace which came to him in his marriage, the 
 sorrow of the past and the joy of the present seemed to blend in a 
 wonderful harmony. He was delighted to find some lines by 
 Whittier, which exactly expressed his feeling : — 
 
 " 'And, as in summer's northern night, 
 
 The evening and the dawn unite, 
 The sunset hues of Time blend with the soul's new morning.' 
 
 The blended beauty of the polar midnight sky, where sunset 
 and dawn meet." 
 
 In the year 1879, the Jubilee of the Bootham School was cele- 
 brated, and John S. Rowntree wrote a sketch of its history for 
 the occasion."* 
 
 Later in the year, on June 27th, Ackworth School comme- 
 morated its centenary, and again in honour of the event he 
 read a lively sketch of the history of Ackworth School. | 
 It was rich in facts and reminiscences on which he made some 
 interesting comments. 
 
 It was like him to connect, as he did, the absence of vacations 
 in the early years of the School with the practice at the same period 
 of disownment for marrying out of the Society, as both belonging 
 to " the same class of mistakes," and due to " a forgetfulness of 
 the place of the affections." 
 
 The quiet tenor of his ordinary life was unexpectedly broken 
 in upon the following year, when his feUow-citizens wished him to 
 
 * See chapter ix. 
 f See chapter viii. 
 
44 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 fill the office of Lord Mayor, chiefly in order that he might repre- 
 sent them on the approaching visit of the British Association, 
 which had held its first meeting in York in 1831, and was expected 
 to celebrate its Jubilee there. Although he had had no previous 
 experience, either as Councillor or Alderman, he felt it would be 
 missing an opportunity of usefulness were he to refuse to let 
 himself be nominated, but he made what he imagined would be a 
 discouraging announcement — ^that if elected he would not offer 
 wine to his guests, nor would he feel able to entertain them in the 
 costly manner of many of his predecessors. Nevertheless he was 
 unanimously elected. 
 
 His own feeling at this time is described in a letter written in 
 reply to one from Isaac Robson, dated 18. xi. 1880. John S. 
 Rowntree said: — 
 
 " It has been and still is a most surprising thing that so unlooked- 
 lor an appointment has come to me. As I have said to many, I could 
 not have crossed the street to put myself in the way of this office, 
 but when entirely unsought it was offered and pressed on me as a 
 duty, and I was also told I might discharge it in my own way, I felt 
 and still feel it would have been a great responsibility to decline. 
 
 " I looked carefully at the question of the ministry to which thou 
 refers. I expect that I may take very Uttle vocal part in meetings 
 during the time I am Mayor, and felt comfortable in looking towards 
 this probability. For one reason I never have felt the ministry wy 
 special vocation in the way in which it is the calling of some of one's 
 friends, and in the second place I felt sure there would be oppor- 
 tunities for the presentation of Christian truth amongst persons not 
 Friends so frequently, that one only longed to have far more ability 
 to occupy with them aright than I possess. I have this week opened 
 a bazaar for the Presbyterians, and taken the chair at a Congre- 
 gational Chapel, speaking at some length on both occasions, I think 
 I may say under as much feeling of responsibiUty as if it had been in 
 our meeting house. 
 
 " We have felt and still feel the prospect of the whole undertaking 
 exceedingly formidable. I think we can, however, sincerely say we 
 have tried to do what was right — ^whether we have succeeded or not 
 is another matter — and now wish to take one day at once trusting 
 for the daily renewal of wisdom, watchfulness and courage according 
 to our needs." 
 
MEMOIR. 45 
 
 As this letter shows, he accepted the position as an opportunity 
 for wider service, and as a vantage ground for upholding the 
 standard of what he believed to be the truth. 
 
 His large knowledge of the local history of York, its public 
 sites and buildings, etc., was often drawn upon in his public 
 addresses, much to the interest of his audience.* 
 
 He honoured his position by the way in which he filled it, 
 with simple dignity and sincerity. He was mindful of its court- 
 esies, but his manner of observance kept them from becoming 
 merely formal or conventional. 
 
 The most interesting public function of the year was the visit 
 of the British Association when, on behalf of the city, he welcomed 
 its guests with a gracious cordiality and dignity befitting the 
 occasion. His speech came after the opening address by the 
 President, Sir John Lubbock (now Lord Avebury) ; -and was 
 thus summarised in the local press : — 
 
 " The Lord Mayor said the kindness of the Council of that Asso- 
 ciation permitted him to move a vote of thanks to their President 
 for the excellent address to which they had just listened, but before 
 doing so he would gladly avail himself of the opportunity thus afforded 
 to speak on behalf of his fellow-citizens, and to offer to that distin- 
 guished Association their most cordial welcome. (Cheers). As he 
 looked over that great assembly his thoughts reverted to some of the 
 many gatherings of men which had taken place in this city during the 
 long annals of its history — to military gatherings, to Parliamentary 
 gatherings, to political, religious, and philanthropic gatherings — ^but 
 he thought he might venture to say that during all that long time there 
 had hardly ever, if ever, been an occasion on which a more unanimous 
 welcome had been accorded by every section of the city than had 
 been accorded to the British Association for the Advancement of 
 Science. 
 
 " It would be needless for him to speak many words on the 
 welcome they wished to give, for it would be far better that the 
 citizens in the coming days should attest the reaUty of this welcome 
 by their acts than that he should attempt to emphasise it by many 
 words. Three centuries had passed since Shakespeare told the world 
 of the hearty and simple words in which, of old time, it was customary 
 for kings to be welcomed to this city. It was not his duty that night 
 
 * See chapter xi. 
 
46 JOHN STEPHENSON EOWNTREE. 
 
 to welcome visitors who were royal by the accident of birth ; but 
 he felt that he stood in the presence of those who were princes in the 
 domain of Science ; and he could not possibly do better than adapt 
 Queen Margaret's words, and say to them, ' Welcome, my lords, 
 to this brave town of York.' Whilst sajdng this, he hoped he would 
 be allowed to express his regret — a regret that would be shared by 
 all — at the absence of the American Ambassador. The music of 
 Mr. Lowell's verse, and the nobility of sentiment expressed in it, 
 had made him friends wherever the English tongue was spoken ; 
 and his presence there had been looked forward to with peculiar 
 interest, though his eminence was rather in literature than in science. 
 The American citizens who were present might be assured that that 
 meeting, assembled in old York, sympathised hardly less with them 
 in the calamity that had overtaken their President,* and which was 
 the cause of the absence of their Ambassador, than if they were 
 surrounded by their fellow-countrymen in the city of New York 
 itself. 
 
 " With respect to the able address of their President, he would 
 only like to say, in passing, that as they heard his reference to 
 the variations that had been noticed in the star Algol in Medusa, it 
 would be interesting to his fellow-citizens to be reminded that, if he 
 was not mistaken, it was by one of their citizens, who died at the 
 early age of twenty-two, that those variations were first observed, 
 and on account of which he received the gold medal of the Royal 
 Society when he was only eighteen years of age.f And there was one 
 further thought that had occurred as they listened to that masterly 
 survey of the progress of the empire of science in the fifty years since 
 that Association first met in the Theatre of the adjoining Museum. 
 He remembered that watchword which a dying Emperor, some 
 seventeen hundred years ago, sent from his death-bed in this city to 
 the regiments — that single word, " Laboremus." He was speaking 
 of the ceaseless labour by which the law was maintained over the 
 broad field of the Roman Empire. And as they passed from subject 
 to subject that evening, he had felt that it was by ceaseless labour 
 that the frontier of the empire of science had been successfully ad- 
 vanced, and that it would be by the maintenance of the same labour 
 that it would be further advanced in the future." 
 
 * President Garfield, who was assassinated 2nd July and died 19th 
 September, 1881. 
 
 t John Goodricke of York, a grandson of Sir John Goodricke of Ribston 
 Hall." The period and law " of Algol, " the demon star " of the Arabs, 
 were discovered by him in 1782. He observed the star in York every fine 
 night, from December till May. Its variability is said to have been noticed 
 first in 1669, but was " rediscovered " by Goodricke. It was the Copley 
 Medal he received. 
 
MEMOIR. 47 
 
 The duty of presiding over meetings and gatherings of very- 
 varied character was one for which he was well fitted by his power 
 of seeing things from the point of view of others, his fairness, and 
 his tact. Perhaps there was no audience to whom he spoke more 
 freely of his own feelings in entering upon office than the 
 members of the Adult School, who made a presentation to the 
 Lord Mayor and Sheriff (Mr. Richard Thompson, also a Friend 
 and a teacher in the Adult School), at the close of their year of 
 ofiice, a time of pleasant and helpful co-operation. Some one had 
 referred to what John S. Rowntree had said at the beginning 
 of their official year, and he is reported to have remarked that 
 
 " He was not quite sure what he did say, but he knew that there 
 was one verse of Scripture which was very much before his mind at 
 the time, that ' Better is the end of a thing than the beginning 
 thereof,' wondering whether that would be what he should stUl feel 
 if he came safely to the 9th November, 1 8 8 1 . And one way in which he 
 felt the end of the year to be better than the beginning of it was through 
 the many valued acquaintances that he had made, and the proofs 
 that had been afiorded him of the help and friendship of men and 
 women of whom he was before ignorant, in every class of society. 
 He was aware, in looking over the year that was past, that he 
 had made many mistakes, and he doubted not that he had made 
 many of which he was not aware. For the degree of success, if that 
 were a right word, with which he had been enabled to discharge the 
 duties that had devolved upon him, he should put first of earthly 
 helps his beloved wife the Lady Mayoress, and then the members of 
 his own family, and after that the support which he had received 
 from men and women through all strata of society. . . . He 
 hoped that the circumstances of his connection with the municipal 
 Ufe in York would deepen in the minds of the members of the Adult 
 School the importance of that municipal life. There was no class of 
 the community more interested in the' maintenance of a right 
 municipal life than were the artizans, so many of whom were 
 members of that Adult School. There was no class in the city more 
 in touch with its health conditions. There was now no property 
 test that need prevent an artizan from being elected to the City 
 Council. That had occurred in some places. The difficulty was 
 that it would be hard for most working men to attend the meetings 
 of the Council and its committees, held as they were in the morning 
 and afternoon, but if that difficulty could be got over, he for one should 
 be delighted if some of the intelligent working men of this city could 
 
48 JOHN STEPHENSON KOWNTREE. 
 
 be elected members of the City Council.* Their prsictical acquaint- 
 ance with much of the work that came before the Council would be 
 of great value." 
 
 The absorptions of ofi&ce did not make him forgetful of ordi- 
 nary claims, or less ready to enter into sympathy with the feelings 
 of others. In all the press of Christmas engagements at the 
 Mansion House he found time to write a tender letter to a friend 
 to whom he knew Christmas was sure to bring an added sense of 
 change and loss. 
 
 During John S. Rowntree's remaining six years of ofl&ce on the 
 City Council, he gave, as Chairman of the Finance Committee, a 
 large amount of time and thought to disentangling the City 
 finances and placing them on a more satisfactory footing. He 
 was diligent also in the discharge of his duties as a City Magistrate. 
 His perfect fairness, his care that no one accused of an offence 
 should be convicted, even were it morally certain that he were 
 guilty, except upon adequate and unquestionable evidence, are 
 the traits which are best remembered now in connection with his 
 work on the bench. 
 
 He was at all times ready to help anything likely to promote 
 the true interests of his city. He took an active share in the 
 movement for starting the Free Library, and gave his help in 
 choosing and supplying books for it, retaining his position on the 
 Free Library Committee for many years after he had ceased to 
 be a member of the City Council. 
 
 In early life he was appointed one of the Charity Trustees for 
 the City of York, and it was a pleasure to him to take his share 
 in the administration of the local charities which came under the 
 control of the Trustees. 
 
 In 1883 the heavy shadow of family bereavement came again 
 upon his home. His eldest son died after a sad and painful 
 illness of nearly a year's duration. He was a schoolboy, of quiet 
 disposition, and an affectionate, trustful nature. As the 
 
 * Since these words were spoken several Adult School members have 
 been elected to the City Council. Its meetings are now held in the 
 evening. 
 
MEMOIR. 49 
 
 father watched the gradual fading of his beloved son, his sense 
 of the mystery of life grew deeper, and his own health suffered 
 from the strain and sorrow, but through all his sadness his grief 
 was " stayed in peace with God and man." In this year, too, he 
 lost his youngest brother, Henry Isaac Rowntree, the first of the 
 family to be connected with what is now known as the York 
 Cocoa Works, an energetic worker for Liberalism and for Tem- 
 perance, and gifted with a keen sense of humour. Two young 
 nieces were also called to their heavenly home ; events which 
 brought him into keenest sympathy with other mourners. Again 
 he proved that whilst sorrow reveals, like nothing else, the depths 
 of human need, it may also become a great revealer of " the 
 Supplier of all need ; " and in his own great loss the desire to bring 
 hope and comfort to others was a sustaining strength and in- 
 spiration. 
 
 He woidd dwell sometimes, in his ministry, on the words : — 
 " I will show him how great things he must suffer for my name's 
 sake " — ^pointing out that to the Christian the caU to suffer is 
 always a caU to suffer for Christ — though he may not see how — 
 and he would urge that for each and all, in any condition, " where 
 there is the willingness to suffer for His name's sake, probably 
 there is more of gain and blessing in this state than can come in 
 any other." 
 
 Although there was a conservative element in his tempera- 
 ment which led him to desire the preservation of what was best 
 in the past, he was a true and outspoken Liberal in his politics. 
 
 He rejoiced in the Liberal victories in the election of 1885-6, 
 but with mental reservations about one or two of his friends who 
 seemed to him so specially qualified for difficult and delicate lines 
 of service in other spheres, that he almost grudged them to the 
 House of Commons. To one of these he wrote : — 
 
 "July, 1886. 
 
 " To be a Member of Parliament is for some men a great vocation. 
 I was struck with this a few months ago when re-reading Sir James 
 Stephen on William WUberforce. He might as truly have said in 
 his letters ' called to be a Member of Parliament,' as Paul wrote 
 ■ called to be an Apostle,' or as he reminded his correspondents they 
 
50 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 were ' called to be saints.' When you agreed to stand we felt sure 
 you felt satisfied in your own mind, and that being so, we of course 
 are much pleased the people have made so good a choice. On 
 the other hand if you had declined to stand, or had not been 
 elected I could as easily have felt such an issue a right one. 
 But in the last resort no one can judge of these things except the 
 person himself. I have strongly felt this myself at least three times 
 in the last six years, when I arrived at an affirmative decision as 
 regards the Magistracy, the Lord Mayoralty, and a negative one as 
 regards Parliament. Your new position will have many and great 
 interests as well as many anxieties and disappointments, involving, 
 to anyone who enters Parliament with a conscience, much exercise 
 of spirit. In this engagement, as in all others, as thy day so may 
 thy strength be." 
 
 The Member of Parliament to whom this unusual letter of 
 congratulation was written says : — 
 
 " I remember thinking it was like the remark of one of our Adult 
 Scholars who wondered why I should descend from the B. Class to 
 the House of Commons ! " 
 
 In one of his pamphlets, which still has a present-day message 
 for Friends, John S. Rowntree deals with the same question. 
 He wrote : — 
 
 " Joseph John Gurney has left an account of his questioning 
 whether he should not have offered himself as a candidate for the 
 representation of Norwich. We may be glad he did not do so. It is 
 almost certain he would have been far less useful in Parliament than 
 as a Minister amongst Friends, and a Christian philanthropist. May 
 we not go further and say that it is rarely a desirable thing for a 
 Christian Minister to enter Parliament ? For the vast majority of 
 men the duties of either vocation are greater than they have strength 
 and grace for, without attempting to combine the two. To some 
 men Christ's words carry a deep significance — ' Let the dead bury 
 their dead : but go thou and preach the Kingdom of God.' "♦ 
 
 John S. Rowntree had a deep sense of the great service Friends 
 may render to their country, by taking a more active part in its 
 legislature, and he wished that more American Friends were able 
 to feel the call to such work.f but, as the foregoing letter shows, 
 he felt strongly that a call to the ministry should be looked upon 
 as a stiU higher vocation. 
 
 • Page 233. See also p. 404. t Page 233. 
 
MEMOIR. 51 
 
 His sense of the supreme claim upon a man which such a ca 
 may constitute would seem to have grown much deeper in the 
 years which had passed since he wrote to Isaac Robson on the 
 subject, but even in that letter his underlying feeling appears to 
 have been that he was offered the opportunity of a new and wider 
 sphere of ministry — and that for this he might rightly be liberated 
 for a time, if necessary, from its more ordinary course. 
 
 In this age of changing thought, of searching inquiry into the 
 grounds of every Christian belief, and of hotly debated questions 
 of Biblical criticism, John S. Rowntree's attitude was that of hope 
 of ultimate gain from all investigation and inquiry, and of quiet 
 confidence in the power of Truth to hold its own, and to commend 
 itself to the mind and reason as well as to the heart and conscience 
 of men. 
 
 In this faith he met disturbing questions ; and when others 
 declared themselves unable to accept time-honoured presentations 
 of Christian doctrine he recognised that their need was often the 
 re-statement of an old truth in terms which they could better 
 understand and make their own. His sense of the need both 
 for a continually enlarging conception of essential truth, and 
 for a clearing away of the misconceptions and errors which 
 are so apt to gather round it, led him into much sympathy with 
 those who were feeling after a larger, fuller understanding of 
 truth than they had yet attained. 
 
 It was because his own hold on the abiding verities remained 
 sure and unshaken, that he could listen with an open mind to the 
 objections and questionings of others. If honestly urged they 
 did not shock him ; and if they led on to controversy, he would 
 never argue for the sake of victory, only in hope that the truth 
 might be presented in a fuller hght. 
 
 One of his friends writes : — 
 
 " Some might have thought him austere and grave, but as they 
 came really to know him, the youngest would find that his tender 
 loving spirit was always ready to give an attentive hearing to doubts 
 and difficulties : no fear of encountering coldness or dogmatism ! 
 The search for truth in a devout spirit was always sacred in his eyes. 
 
52 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 and was met with sympathy and appreciation, however conclusions 
 might differ. I remember especially a long conversation upon a 
 question of Biblical criticism in which I had ventured to differ from 
 his view of the matter, suggesting with some diffidence that an 
 argument he had advanced really told more against than in favour of 
 his position : he thought for a moment and then at once acknowledged 
 it might be so." 
 
 But however necessary or inevitable this phase of questioning 
 and criticism might be, and however good in its ultimate results, 
 its immediate effect in silencing some who had been or might be 
 called to the ministry caused him keen concern and anxiety. 
 
 For he had a profound sense of the absolute necessity for the 
 welfare of any Christian Church, of a true and Uving ministry. 
 He used to say there was " no evidence of any Friends' congre- 
 gation having flourished for any considerable length of time, or 
 having efficiently fulfilled the objects of Church fellowship, in the 
 absence of a living Gospel Ministry." 
 
 John S. Rowntree believed that there has been amongst 
 Friends generally, an inadequate sense of the vitd importance of 
 this gift, and of the need, amongst those called to its exercise, of 
 more devotion to the work ; the need of more who should regard 
 it as the first claim upon their lives, one to which other things 
 must, if necessary, give way. 
 
 It seemed to him that to answer nobly to so high a call, there 
 should surely be a willingness and even a joyful readiness, to 
 make many sacrifices for it. 
 
 The silent ponderings of many years found expression later 
 in an impressive address at the Yearly Meeting of 1902, of 
 which an abridged report foUows : — 
 
 " The extension of First-day School work, and the rise and con- 
 tinued progress of the great Foreign Mission work, were two very 
 remarkable developments of Church life, for which we had occasion 
 to be abundantly thankful. We might perhaps look upon the 
 Foreign Mission work of the Society, as a growth of the spiritual gift 
 of the evangelist in foreign lands ; and the extension of the 
 First-day School work as an extension of the spiritual gift 
 of teaching at home. The Church was liable to be stronger 
 
MEMOIR. 53 
 
 in certain gifts at one time than at others, and sometimes to over- 
 estimate other gifts. The Church in Corinth, when the Apostle wrote to 
 it, was over-estimating the gift of tongues, and under-estimating the 
 gift of prophecy. He did not know if that was our condition at the 
 present time, but the gift of prophecy would seem to be either less 
 poured out, or less accepted and developed amongst us than at a 
 former period. Did not that bring us back to the consideration 
 whether it was in the Divine appointment that the gift of pro- 
 phecy should continue in the Church, and whether up to the present 
 time its continuance and development had not been found constantly 
 associated with the progress and growth and vitality of the Churches ? 
 If it were allowed to fall into disuse, or were under-estimated, and full 
 opportunity not given for its development, weakness was sure to 
 follow. They had heard of the condition of many small and some 
 deca3dng meetings, and had been begged not to think sentimentally 
 of this, but rather to have their thoughts directed towards the great 
 populations and the extension of the work of the Society amongst 
 them. Did we not need to do both ? It did not seem to him a merely 
 sentimental thought that we should be greatly interested in these 
 small meetings, with their long historical associations going back to 
 successive generations of honoured and saintly men and women. 
 On the other hand, it was undoubtedly true that the early triumphs of 
 Christianity were in the large centres of population, and it was good for 
 us to see if we had strength to meet the needs of these at the present time. 
 But be it one or the other, was not the growth and strengthening of 
 these congregations intimatel}^ associated with recognition of and 
 belief in the gift of prophecy in the Church ? He felt that we needed 
 to press upon Friends the place of this gift of prophecy. It was not 
 difficult to see from the past history of the Church who were the 
 people who were most largely commissioned by God for the extension 
 of His Kingdom, and also afterwards for the buUding up of His Church. 
 They were very largely young people under thirty years of age. 
 When the Society of Friends first found its lodgment in London, in 
 the early days of the Commonwealth, the leader of the band of 
 preachers who came here was only thirty years of age, and the men 
 who did the greater part of the work, like Edward Burrough and 
 others, were less than that. At the present time, our Friends in the 
 station of recorded minister were, to a large extent, a very aged body. 
 In his Quarterly Meeting there were about fifty-five recorded minis- 
 ters, several above seventy years of age, the majority being over 
 sixty, and those below thirty were extremely few. Probably that 
 state of things was testified to. by the state of the benches behind him 
 now, which differed so much from the time he remembered, when 
 they were crowded from end to end. In such a case the Lord Him- 
 
54 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 self had indicated what was the duty of the Church. Pray to your 
 Father, who is the Lord of the harvest, that He will send forth 
 labourers into the harvest. It would be a great mistake to think 
 that by ' praying ' the Lord meant merely the use of words of sup- 
 plication to God. He knew that if the minds of His people were turned 
 towards prayer, the way in which they might fulfil that which the 
 Spirit of Truth prompted would open out before them. There was 
 much prayer, when the concern for the Foreign Mission work arose 
 amongst us, that labourers might be sent out ; then there came 
 gradually an understanding as to a simple method of machinery ; 
 after that the labourers came forward, and now there were seventy 
 or eighty missionaries who had been sent out by this Society, and 
 they had found a great number of other labourers, and we knew how 
 great was the work. Was not the same thing needed in the Home 
 Mission work ? We had empty meeting-houses. Should we not 
 endeavour to bring about a change by prayer in regard to that ? 
 We wanted labourers from amongst the young men and women 
 who might feel called to the work of the evangelist. In the reign 
 of Queen Anne, a certain young man set out from the North to travel 
 in the ministry, possessing at the time scarcely ^^50, and one of the 
 first things he did was to buy a horse. That was the beginning of a 
 life-long ministry. The first thing for a home missionary now 
 was not to buy a horse ; but we wanted the same devotion to 
 labour in the work. We needed to pray, and to seek an oppor- 
 tunity for the exercise of the gifts of young men and women. 
 In the report from one Quarterly Meeting there was a reference 
 to some of the causes that were preventing the more educated 
 and cultivated young people from giving themselves to the 
 service of God, or at least to the more distinctively religious work. 
 No doubt influences had prevailed in the spirit of the world and 
 the lack of entire dedication to God. But this report served 
 to show further that amongst those who were spiritually qualified, 
 and with a love for Christ, certain other influences were preventing 
 them from giving themselves to the work of the Christian ministry. 
 No doubt some of these causes were deep and beyond our power to 
 remedy ; they were partially connected with the great changes of 
 thought that there had been in the world and in all the Protestant 
 Churches in the last forty or fifty years. He lately found that the 
 magazine containing Sir Henry Thompson's article on ' The Unknown 
 God ' had been lying on one of our library tables for many weeks, 
 and he had wondered what the efiect of its perusal had been. He 
 thought it might be a good thing for some to read that article, at 
 any rate for some who had a share in the Christian ministry, for while 
 we did not want to feed our minds on doubt, our prophets must have 
 
MEMOIR. 55 
 
 some understanding of what those to whom they minister are thinking. 
 Here, at the beginning of the twentieth century, they saw a cultured 
 man, discussing just those subjects that we found discussed with such 
 extraordinary power in the Book of Job. He regretted that some- 
 times there did not seem to be a disposition to try to understand the 
 position of those who were thus perplexed. 
 
 "To do this might bring us into great humiliation ; one might 
 feel unable to see the answer to some of these questions ; at any rate 
 it would bring one into sympathy with those who do feel that. He 
 trusted that there might be some raised up who would feel it their 
 duty to give their minds and thoughts and spiritual exercise to these 
 things, so that they might have grace to declare to the cultured and 
 educated the unknown God whom they were ignorantly worshipping. 
 As to practical dealing with weak congregations, of course one did not 
 want to do anything to lessen their sense of responsibility ; and it 
 was interesting to see sometimes how, when that sense of respon- 
 sibility had come, in a meeting that had been dying out, its work and 
 service had been greatly blessed and owned. Forty years ago, in a 
 certain meeting in Yorkshire, it was proposed to sell Friends' property ; 
 and now in that meeting, from First-day morning to evening, Christian 
 work was going on, which seemed to be largely due to the influence 
 of a very few people, almost of one family. There was not a meeting, 
 he believed, in Yorkshire that was visited by such a number of Friends 
 as was Whitby. Not far from Whitby there was another meeting 
 which had seemed to be expiring, but which had been brought to a 
 fair measure of vitality and a good deal of spiritual life almost entirely 
 through the work of visitors. He believed that for many months 
 the meeting of Kirbymoorside had never failed to be visited by 
 some Friend from a distance. We needed to see the power of an 
 itinerant ministry. It was very largely through such a ministry that 
 the Society of Friends was gathered in the seventeenth century. 
 He was much struck by the fact that when George Keith, who had 
 worked with Friends in this country, turned against them and 
 went to the Colonies, he tried to get an Act passed by which the 
 itinerant work of Friends in the plantations should be prevented. 
 We needed to make way for an itinerant ministry, and to recognise 
 that some persons have a special gift in that direction. There 
 were influences at work which prevented those amongst us who had 
 received the gift of prophecy from developing that gift. There were 
 some, he believed, who, possessing this gift, regarded it as only a 
 subordinate thing in their lives, considering that their first duty was 
 to their business, or to the city council, or other things ; but that 
 in a kind of incidental way they might properly speak in First-day 
 meeting sometimes. Surely that was not a right view to take of it. 
 
56 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTKEE. 
 
 They heard the suggestion given to Friends yesterday that when on 
 their holidays they should find out picturesque valleys where there 
 were Friends' meetings. That was all right in its way ; but surely 
 it was not a right view of the ministry to make it incidental to a 
 holiday, and besides it was a good thing that tired people should have 
 rest, even from preaching. We needed men who would feel that they 
 were separated to the Gospel of Christ. To his mind it was not very 
 difiacult to see the way in which the Lord would have His people 
 move. He had given us landmarks in our own experience, and in 
 the history of the whole Church, and of this people in the past. And, 
 following on in the way He would direct us, as we prayed that the 
 Lord would send forth labourers into His harvest, might we see our 
 own part in bringing about the gracious answer to that prayer, and 
 the Lord would abundantly pour out His gifts upon his people, for 
 the honour and extension of His truth in the earth."* 
 
 In this address, John S. Rowntree showed his sense of the 
 supreme importance to the Church of the work of its young people, 
 and also the necessity of great sympathy and patience with them 
 whilst still feeling their way through intellectual difficulties. 
 
 It was in this spirit that he watched the opening career of his 
 gifted nephew JohnjWilhelm Rowntree, before it could be seen 
 what his line of action was to prove. 
 
 When it became clear that this would be not merely critical 
 but powerfully and vitally re-constructive, John S. Rowntree 
 rejoiced unreservedly, and between the two there came to be a 
 strong bond of union in purpose, and a whole-hearted S3mipathy. 
 The ends to which the younger prophet devoted his brave and 
 bright young life, giving his message with an arresting freshness 
 of presentation, a wealth of new suggestiveness with regard to 
 plans and methods, and with such rousing and kindling effect 
 upon others — these ends were in closest harmony with those 
 for which the older man had given all his best strength and energy 
 with patient steadfast fidelity, for a generation before, in a service 
 which had become so habitual, so much a part of the accustomed 
 order of things, that perhaps we hardly thought more of it than 
 we think of the rising of the sun each day. 
 
 * Some years later these thoughts were expanded in an article on Gospel 
 Ministry, written for the Friend^ Quarterly Examiner, and now republished 
 as chapter v. of this volume. Pages 248 and 252 are of special interest 
 in connection with the foregoing address. 
 
MEMOIR. 57 
 
 One of his friends writes : — 
 
 " Some of the work that John S. Rowntree has done for the 
 Society of Friends is well known, but it may be that we hardly recog- 
 nise how much it owes to his counsel and statesmanship. I believe 
 that he had a large share in making the present forward movement 
 possible, and I am thankful indeed that it was given him in this life 
 to see so large a measure of encouragement for the future in connection 
 with the cause that he loved. It is not everyone who is able to keep 
 alive, as he did, a keen sympathy for movements initiated by ayounger 
 generation, and many of us cannot say how much we owe to him in 
 this direction." 
 
 In 1892 he was able to carry out a long-felt wish, and to retire 
 altogether from business. This enabled him to give more time 
 to visiting meetings, to research and the preparation of lectures 
 and papers. 
 
 In the following year the death of his brother-in-law, George 
 Gillett, was a deep sorrow to him. In a letter written soon 
 afterwards, he said of his brother, " He was one of the most 
 Christ-like men I ever knew." 
 
 John S. Rowntree always turned as readily to the small as 
 to the great. He was interested in the little village school 
 at Dringhouses, not far from his home, and, in 1894, consented 
 to act as the first Chairman of its Parish Council. 
 
 In the same year, he responded to an invitation, conveyed 
 through Professor Sadler, to lecture on George Fox, at Oxford, to 
 the University Extension students, about a thousand of whom 
 were in attendance from aU parts of the country, and from many 
 Continental and American cities. His lecture formed part of a 
 course on the History, Literature, Philosophy and Art of the 
 Seventeenth Century. He wrote afterwards : — " I believe the 
 majority of my Oxford audience knew practically nothing of 
 the subject." His own lecture* was afterwards repeated, in 
 part at least, at Chalfont House, the Friends' Settlement in 
 London. 
 
 In 1895, the Friends' memorable Manchester Conference was 
 held, and he was asked to preside on the opening day. He 
 
 ♦ Chapter i. 
 
58 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 felt that he would have had a far better opportunity of present- 
 ing thoughts which he had greatly at heart, as an individual 
 speaker than as Chairman, but he acceded to the wishes of his 
 friends. One who knew him well, writes : — 
 
 "He was an admirable Chairman, particularly in all Quaker 
 gatherings. Firstly, he was gifted with an eminently judicial mind. 
 He was always weighing the thoughts presented, not only in the 
 light of the moment, but in the light of history, and so confidence 
 came unsought both in the soundness of his judgment, in the wideness 
 of his knowledge, and in the truth of his perspective. 
 
 " Secondly, he was very catholic, never perplexed but always 
 interested in diversities of thought and character. And thirdly, 
 his special interest in any gathering of Friends for serious thought, 
 led him to give of his best very generously, and often induced a 
 flow of humour which was not always imagined of him. 
 
 " At the Manchester Conference he was asked to give an in- 
 augural address at the first session. He did not like the time limit 
 proposed for the speakers to follow, he thought it unhistorical amongst 
 Friends, but he agreed to take the chair and respond to the welcome 
 of Dr. Maclaren and the Free Church deputation. His short but 
 full address was most happily proportioned and appropriate. It 
 shows how firmly and yet graciously he stood as a Friend for freedom 
 in the light of history, for the liberty in which he believed Christ 
 has made us free." 
 
 After the Conference was over, John S. Rowntree contributed 
 two valuable papers to the Friends' Quarterly Examiner, entitled 
 "The Problem before the Manchester Conference, with some 
 Suggestions for its Solution." 
 
 In an introductory note he explained that " many questions, 
 some of extreme interest, had been ably dealt with, but that to 
 a large extent they had been discussed independently of each 
 other, and their common relationship to the central problem 
 which had led to the convening of the Conference." What 
 he had written, he said, was " an attempt very imperfectly exe- 
 cuted to supply this omission, and to give a practical outcome 
 to the proceedings of the Conference."* 
 
 • See chapter viii 
 
MEMOIR. 59 
 
 This last sentence is most characteristic. He was continually 
 trying to find " a practical outcome " for every fresh stirring 
 of interest or sjmipathy, and every quickened ideal. 
 
 Believing that in every Friends' meeting there is a place and 
 a service for each member, he warmly encouraged undertakings 
 which might bring a variety of gifts into exercise, and amongst 
 such he gave special sympathy to anything designed to help 
 the smaller meetings by visits from Friends at a distance. In 
 this connection he took a leading part in the forming of the 
 Yorkshire Interchange of Visits Committee about 1886. He laid 
 great stress on the desirability of having the travelling expenses 
 of all visitors paid from a central fund, so that the cost of travelling 
 should not prevent any from giving help, and at first he seems 
 to have raised this fund privately. In 1897, at his instance, the 
 Quarterly Meeting undertook the matter, and encouraged Friends 
 to contribute to the Visitation Fund. A permanent Executive, 
 to meet monthly, was also appointed the for more efficient 
 carrying out of the work, but the original open Committee 
 meetings continued to be held every quarter. Latterly the 
 organisation has been merged in that of the larger Committee 
 started to carry on the work of extension and upbuilding which 
 the late John Wilhelm Rowntree was planning shortly before his 
 death, and which, in commemoration of that event, and of the 
 holding of the Yearly Meeting in the county, has since been 
 known as "The Yorkshire 1905 Committee." 
 
 John S. Rowntree felt that 
 "the visitation of our meetings should not by any means be confined 
 to those who have gifts of expression. The more the need of fellow- 
 ship is .studied, the more apparent does it become how varied are the 
 spiritual gifts which are called into exercise in its prosecution. It is 
 a helpful experience for most of^jus to be introduced from time to time 
 into fellowship with those living under different circumstances from 
 our own ; for the members of a large congregation to meet with the 
 very small companies that now occupy some of our places of worship, 
 and, on the other hand, for the visitor from a small company of Friends 
 to enter into feeUng with a large meeting in which difficulties may 
 exist, different from but not less serious than those in the smaller 
 gathering." 
 
6o JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 John S. Rowntree not only took a warm interest in the 
 general scheme, but followed with individual sympathy the par- 
 ticular visits arranged, and for a long time he took a large share 
 in them himself. 
 
 He felt it a cause of much thankfulness when, in 1896, he 
 was able to carry out a long felt wish to visit, with a minute 
 from his Monthly Meeting, all the meetings within the compass 
 of York Quarterly Meeting. 
 
 In these visits his wife often accompanied him, to his great 
 help and satisfaction. He had it much on his heart to testify 
 to the presence and power of the living Christ ; to set forth the 
 spirituality and inwardness of true Christianity as a very real 
 experience in human lives and hearts, something far beyond and 
 above outward observances or a mere profession. 
 
 His visit to Scholes, a little country meeting, is still vividly 
 remembered. He spoke of a passage read in the Men's Class 
 which he had attended, before Meeting, " I came not to send 
 peace, but a sword," and as an illustration of the way in which 
 the evil nature in man has often been roused into opposition by 
 the preaching of the truth, he reminded his hearers of George 
 Fox's experience some two centuries before, in a field by the river 
 in the neighbouring town of Brighouse when, as he spoke of 
 the Light of Christ, a crowd of butchers and others set upon 
 him in violent anger, and there was a riot. But afterwards 
 George Fox was able to say that in that place there came to be 
 "A fine people, who sat under the teachings of Christ." The 
 meaning and the outcome of " sitting under the teachings of 
 Christ " formed the subject of the rest of his address ; and there 
 was a word for every class. He spoke of the necessity of growth 
 and progress, and of the fellowship of love and service. Only, 
 the service must be humble, if it was to be true and lasting. 
 He had thought of King Uzziah, called to the throne when 
 only sixteen years old, to find his kingdom in ruins. He had 
 devoted himself magnificently to rebuilding it and was " mar- 
 vellously helped," as all who truly seek to build up and 
 strengthen others will be " marvellously helped " intellectually 
 
MEMOIR. 6l 
 
 and spiritually. Only, the warning of the story must never 
 be forgotten : when Uzziah's heart was " lifted up," then he 
 fell. The truest, the most faithful service will always be accom- 
 panied by the greatest humility and lowliness of mind. 
 
 He felt deeply for himself, as for others, this need of humility. 
 As illustrating this, Alfred Neave Brayshaw writes : 
 
 " One of the finest things I ever heard from him was the account 
 he gave to York Monthly Meeting of his service, when he returned 
 a minute that had been granted him to visit the meetings in York- 
 shire. He spoke of the strain on the spiritual life to any one put in 
 such a position — how difficult it was to keep in the spirit of humility 
 when one was made much of, consulted on all manner of subjects, 
 on business matters, on delicate affairs in a Meeting, as a Magistrate, 
 etc. The tone of his remarks was extraordinarily instructive." 
 
 It was towards the close of this year that he wrote to a young 
 Friend telling her that he had " the utmost unity with what 
 she had said in Meeting of the need to be humble if we are to be 
 of much use in the world." He added, "This thought and 
 feeling has been very present with me of late — more, I think, than 
 ever in my life before." 
 
 Combined with this was his deep sense of the need for con- 
 stant watchfulness. A few years later he wrote : — 
 
 " As one grows older the mystery of life does not grow any less ; 
 one becomes more and more sensible, I think, that no past experience 
 and progress carries with it any immunity from the liability of falling. ' ' 
 
 Do not his words come to us with a double appeal ? It is not 
 only of ourselves that we have to think, of our own need of 
 humility. It must surely be possible to show our gratitude 
 for what we are receiving at public gatherings — Summer Schools, 
 and Conferences — to give the warm and just praise which may be 
 a strength and encouragement, without making the path of our 
 guides and leaders more difficult than it need be. 
 
 A former master at Bootham School recalls a powerful address 
 after the death of Tennyson, He thought it more memorable 
 and striking than anything he heard or read at the time, on 
 the same subject. The sermon was preached on a Wednesday 
 
62 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 afternoon to the two Schools and a very small gathering of other 
 Friends. 
 
 He recalls, also, a favourite quotation with which a sermon 
 would sometimes be concluded : — 
 
 " In heaven His servants serve Him, 
 And no failing comes between 
 The service that they render 
 
 And the service that they mean." 
 
 In the summer of this year, 1896, he attended the Friends' 
 Foreign Mission Conference at Darlington, and read an interesting 
 sketch of the missionary work of the Society almost from the 
 time of its rise, until i6go, and then again from i860, with his 
 own thoughts as to the reasons why the earlier missionary work 
 of Friends proved so transitory in its effects. 
 
 At the end of the year, just after completing his visits to 
 the various Yorkshire Meetings, with much peace and com- 
 fort to his own mind, an unexpected press of engagements all 
 coming together proved too much for his strength, which sud- 
 denly collapsed, and a serious illness set in, followed by long and 
 weary months of slow convalescence. He recovered, but his 
 strength was not again what it had been. His health had 
 never been robust, and now he was liable to sudden and unex- 
 plained drops in strength and energy, and at times he would feel 
 very feeble. 
 
 At other times, however, he was fairly vigorous, and able 
 to fulfil most of his usual engagements. Even when feeling ill 
 and unequal to work, he still kept on his way with patient, 
 quiet persistence, never abandoning an undertaking unless com- 
 pelled. He was able to attend several sittings of the first Friends' 
 Summer School at Scarborough in 1897, and to deliver three 
 lectures there, incorporated in this volume, on The Place of the 
 Society of Friends in the Religious Life of England. 
 
 As closely connected with the subject of J. S. Rowntree's 
 lectures at Scarborough, reference may here be made to his 
 paper on The Relations of Denominational to National Life, 
 written for a winter Quarterly Meeting at York some time before, 
 
MEMOIR. 63 
 
 of which he wrote afterwards — 
 
 " . . . I felt my paper was a severe strain on the attention and 
 patience of the company, but they bore it excellently, and many 
 seemed very much interested. I did not know when I wrote my 
 paper how the engagements of the Q.M. week would be an object 
 lesson, far more eloquent than my figures, as to the absorbing power 
 of the national life. A School Board contest is on the way here. . . 
 Of the six unsectarian candidates, two are Friends, and the greatest 
 interest is being taken by Friends, so that it has quite interfered with 
 the attendance of some at the Quarterly Meeting." 
 
 In this paper it had been pointed out that the early Friends 
 " had done a really far greater work than found a small denom- 
 ination." They had grasped eternal principles of religious 
 liberty and social justice and brotherhood, and by courageously 
 trjdng various " holy experiments," in applying their principles 
 to the working of human institutions and the actual affairs of 
 men, they had set in motion ever widening circles of influence 
 and power. " An historian like Bancroft," John S. Rowntree 
 reminded his audience, " sees that the independence of the 
 United States was the natural outcome of the foundation of 
 New England and Pennsylvania." 
 
 It was this large conception of the place and work of Friends 
 that John S. Rowntree put before the Scarborough Summer 
 School, with much picturesque illustration and interesting 
 detail. His lectures set forth what was almost his lifelong 
 theme, the responsibility which rests upon every Church to pro- 
 claim its message to the world ; the great thought that no Christ- 
 ian community exists for itself, but is entrusted with a mission 
 which it is bound in honour to fulfil. 
 
 He maintained that whenever Friends as a body had for- 
 gotten this, and failed to look beyond the supposed interests 
 and welfare of their own community, they had missed some 
 great opportunity, if they had not made a serious mistake.* 
 
 * He gave two striking instances of this, see pp. 203 and 208. 
 He was himself the speaker referred to, page 20Z, whose voice was as that 
 of one crying in the wilderness. 
 
64 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 The testimony of Friends against the taking of oaths was one 
 in which he took keen interest ; and he often dwelt on the duty 
 of perfect truthfnhiess in speech. It was a deep satisfaction 
 to him to be able to say : — 
 
 " After making careful enquiry in this country and in the United 
 States, I have been unable to discover that any person has ever been 
 convicted for making a false affirmation." 
 
 John S. Rowntree gave his hearty sympathy to the Free 
 Church Federation. While he rejoiced in the spirit of union 
 of which it was the outcome, and in its forward aim and construc- 
 tive policy, he shared Dr. Berry*s sense of the uselessness of this, 
 or any other religious association, unless its members can dwell 
 inwardly near the sources of spiritual strength, and under the 
 quickening influence of high ideals, seeking continually for " fresh 
 visions of (their) vocation and its possibilities." 
 
 He was from the first " one of the most valued leaders of the 
 York Free Church Council," and was " always ready to uphold 
 whatever tended to advance civil righteousness and religious 
 liberty."* 
 
 During these years many changes took place in John S. Rown- 
 tree's family. Children married and settled in homes of their 
 own, or work elsewhere took some away for a time. 
 
 His constant thought of the absent ones is shown in a letter 
 of birthday greeting to a married daughter : — 
 
 " Though under different roofs, we shall not forget to honour the 
 day in spirit, with grateful memories of all the delightful love and 
 fellowship we have shared since thy early birthdays — and with 
 warm desires that peace, joy and blessing may be with thee now that 
 another anniversary comes round, under fresh circumstances, and 
 with all thy life enriched, as we trust, by being interwoven with that 
 of another." 
 
 As a correspondent, J. S. Rowntree was " extremely exact 
 and punctual," if occasionally tantalising in his brevity. He 
 frequently ended his letters with the words Pax VoUscum. 
 
 For many who loved him this closing benediction was the 
 treasured human element — the symbol of affectionate sympathy 
 * Minute of York Free Church Council, 1907. 
 
MEMOIR. 65 
 
 and remembrance — ^in a note otherwise concerned only with 
 necessary matters of fact. In earlier years he often wrote long 
 and interesting letters, but later the contraction of two fingers 
 made writing increasingly irksome, and he used a typewriter, 
 or employed a secretary, and this did not tend to expansiveness 
 or self-revealing in his letters. 
 
 Like Darwin, he took careful note of all objections urged 
 against anything he had said or written. 
 
 Whilst letters of approval or of thanks for any kindness or 
 service rendered, might presently be destroyed, those expressing 
 doubt or objection were carefully preserved to be "dwelt upon," 
 to use again a favourite expression which implied so much of 
 thoughtful weighing and consideration. 
 
 Nevertheless, to destroy letters from those who were dear 
 to him was always an unwelcome effort. To one of his friends 
 he wrote : — 
 
 " The piles of letters you have had to deal with must have possessed 
 a mournful interest. I feel the dealing with these memories of the 
 past an engagement that uses up nervous energy very much — you 
 are so sensible of the brevity of life, and for the time it is Uke dwelling 
 among the dead." 
 
 In his own large correspondence John S. Rowntree received 
 many requests for historical facts and data connected with the 
 history of Friends, and in his turn he took every opportunity 
 of gleaning these from others. Isaac Sharp* was most kind in 
 again and again looking up the facts required. He writes : — 
 
 " I greatly valued my intercourse with John S. Rowntree. I 
 f requentily looked up for him information to which I had ready access 
 — information which he knew so well how to digest and use. He was 
 no mere antiquarian, but he had the historic instinct, which enabled 
 him to put the due proportionate value on the data before him. 
 No one, so far as I know, had a better acquaintance with the general 
 history of Friends, both internal and external, that is in relation 
 to the general history of this country and its reUgious movements. 
 In his enthusiasm for history and historical research, the appearance 
 of reserve which made him less easy of access than men of more 
 
 * Recording Clerk to the Society of Friends. 
 
66 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 effusive temperament, entirely broke down both in private conver- 
 sation or when speaking in public. This was equally true of those 
 admirable and stirring addresses on various subjects which he gave 
 to the Yearly Meeting, and many other gatherings. I well remember 
 one interview in which he and I spent three hours without inter- 
 mission in the strong rooms at Devonshire House. It was a cold 
 day, and I fancy we pored over ancient books, in overcoats. I 
 thoroughly enjoyed the time, and I think he did. I believe it was 
 his first visit to these rooms from which much useful material had 
 often been gleaned for him — not only by myself." 
 
 Although he was often making journeys in " the service of 
 Truth," as he would have said of any one else, to speak or 
 lecture in some other part of the country, he did not travel much 
 for the sake of travelling. On holidays he much liked to visit 
 places with historical associations. Old Roman remains always 
 interested him, and on one occasion an exploration of the Roman 
 Wall was a keen enjo3nnent ; also a visit to Oxford, and to 
 Stonehenge. He would enjoy a visit now and then to Switzerland 
 or Italy, but preferred to keep away from dizzy heights and 
 mountain railways. 
 
 In later years, a part of the annual holiday was often spent 
 at Strathpeffer for the sake of being under the treatment of Dr. 
 Fortescue Fox, his friend and medical adviser, whose skiU and 
 careful thoroughness often brought relief in times of recurring 
 physical weakness or suffering, and attendant depression. 
 
 He generally returned from Scotland with some fresh strength 
 and vigour for his autumn and winter engagements. On fine 
 Saturdays, walks on the cliffs at Scarborough were also a great 
 pleasure and refreshment ; and when, as often, they were taken 
 in company with his brother, Joseph Rowntree, whose fellow- 
 ship and sympathy had always been so much to him, these 
 expeditions were a keen enjojmient. In this brotherly union, 
 the close tie between the John,* and Joseph Rowntree of an earlier 
 generation seemed to be again repeated. 
 
 . ,*, ^°^ ,5°^^^® °^ Scaxborough, uncle to J. S. R., and the father 
 of Mrs. J. W. Robson, of Huddersfield, of Joshua Rowntree and Mrs 
 John Edward EUis. John Rowntree was a wise, far seeing man who' 
 combined mtellectual depth with much breadth of view He died in 
 1845. 
 
MEMOIR. 67 
 
 He continued, when able, to visit other Meetings on Sundays, 
 with his wife, and his friends were conscious of a growing spirit- 
 uality in his ministry. As Jonathan B. Hodgkin has said : "The 
 very intensity of his soul went with his message and his words 
 laid hold," for they " touched life at every point," and his hearers 
 felt that he spoke of what he knew. 
 
 After the autumn Quarterly Meeting at Sheffield, October, 
 1899, one who was present wrote of John S. Rowntree's service 
 there : — 
 
 '' I never before felt him so completely a prophet in his ministry, 
 an inspired messenger and teacher. As several people remarked, 
 he lost all the hesitancy that sometimes rather mars, and spoke with 
 power, chiefly in earnest desire that all should uphold a living testi- 
 mony to the spirituality of our faith, that in these days of newspaper 
 conflicts about rites and ceremonies and incense and the Real Pres- 
 ence, we should ' speak that we do know ' of the real presence of 
 Christ with us continually, as Guide, Teacher, Inspirer and Friend. 
 
 " I felt his ministry very inspiring and it fiUed one with the desire 
 to know much more of this ' Real Presence ' aU the time. Also I 
 felt that the fact of his being able to give himself so beautifully to the 
 care of all the Churches, when many private matters pressed, was 
 very teaching." 
 
 When he took the Reading at the Sunday evening meeting, 
 he did everything he could to make it living and interesting, 
 having always in mind the young hearers from the Schools. 
 
 One of these who was at York nearly twenty years ago 
 writes : 
 
 " When I was at the Mount, word was always passed round 
 when he was to take the Reading at Evening Meeting, and no 
 headaches or colds were too severe not to be ignored to hear him. 
 I remember particularly how we enjoyed a series of talks on Job, and 
 what an inspiration they were." 
 
 He would sometimes speak at the evening meeting at the 
 Retreat. On one occasion he drew lessons of hope and trust 
 from the habits of migratory birds, " lone wandering, but not 
 lost." Another time he read Psalm xix. and followed it by- 
 John xiv., dwelling upon its message of comfort and strength. 
 
68 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 A favourite text from which many must have heard him 
 speak was : " Let each man wherein he was called, therein abide 
 with God." He never used the words in any unprogressive 
 sense — the " calling " itself is to progress — ^but he would dwell 
 with a wonderful impressiveness on the possibility of knowing 
 the Divine communion in any circumstances, of joy or sorrow. 
 " He emphasised the importance of not yielding to the temptation 
 to think that in some other sphere or circumstances one could 
 serve God much better than just where one has been placed." 
 He would speak of the temptation which comes with any in- 
 terruption to one's line of service, through illness or otherwise, 
 to feel as if everything were thereby stopped for the time, and 
 nothing could be done but wait till the arrested life and service 
 can go on again. He would urge that in reality there has been 
 no " arrest " — that the trying hindrance is no interruption to 
 life, but a part of it, the opportunity for a fresh kind of service, 
 on the right use of which may depend the success of the next 
 step one may be called to take. 
 
 There was, of course, nothing original in this thought, but 
 it was expressed with a power and reality that made it memorable. 
 Is it not much akin to the feeling with which Edward Thring 
 reviewed his experience when he wrote — 
 
 " How strongly it comes home to me, that it is not what we do 
 or say that God uses, but our lives, and how immeasurably my life 
 has been raised by the trials and waste of time that to a great extent 
 have destroyed the intellectual power of the work done." 
 
 Whittier's poetry, for which John S. Rowntree had a growing 
 love, was sometimes taken as the subject of an address. He 
 thought of " the lasting and Catholic elements " in Whittier's 
 writings as being (i) " the breadth of his human sympathies ; 
 (2) the spirituality of his apprehension of true religion, however 
 it may array itself as to exterior profession ; and (3) the hope- 
 fuhiess with which he views even the sin and suffering of earth 
 in the light of the Divine love." He looked upon Whittier 
 as having been " to quite a remarkable extent the interpreter 
 
MEMOIR. 69 
 
 of a spiritual conception of Christian truth to the nineteenth 
 and twentieth centuries." 
 
 In his Scarborough Summer School lectures, he remarked that 
 " the responses evoked by the speeches of Bright, and the poetry 
 of Whittier, indicate that the truths they enunciated, even when 
 unpopular at the time, reached the Divine witness in the hearts 
 of thousands."* 
 
 John S. Rowntree thought of Whittier as 
 
 "rather specifically the poet of later life. Very few poets have 
 expressed more tenderly the thoughts of advanced life, and yet 
 through all these pensive musings there runs the element of cheerful 
 Christian hope. . . ." 
 
 " A very noticeable feature of Whittier's poetry is the excellence 
 of that which he wrote in the later years of his life, in marked contrast 
 with Wordsworth, who did all his best work when he was a young 
 man. The power of Whittier's poetry depended very largely upon 
 its spiritual insight. This insight grew clearer and deeper with 
 advancing years, whilst familieirity with authorship polished and 
 refined his style. He may probably be the most lastingly known by 
 his two poems. The Eternal Goodness and Our Master, written in 
 186s and 1866. . ." 
 
 " Amongst the later poems which naturally appeal the most 
 powerfully to readers in middle or later life may be mentioned At 
 Eventide, 1878 ; The Clear Vision, 1868 ; My Birthday, 1871 ; At 
 Last, 1882 ; What the Traveller said at Sunset, 1883 ; and the lines to 
 O. W. Holmes written but a few weeks before Whittier's death in 
 i892."t 
 
 His range of reading was wide, but he turned with special 
 interest to history, and to religious and general biography. 
 Nothing of importance in these fields seemed to escape his notice. 
 He kept in touch, in a general way, with what was being done 
 in the field of Biblical interpretation, and specially enjoyed 
 those volumes of "The Expositor's Bible " written by Dr. George 
 Adam Smith, and one or two books by Professor Ramsay. 
 
 He always welcomed books by his friends Frederic Seebohm, 
 Dr. Thomas Hodgkin, Dr. J. Rendel Harris and Dr. Rufus M. 
 Jones. Oxford Reformers was often referred to, and the pleasure 
 
 • See the whole passage, p. 187. 
 
 f From J. S. Rowntree's Notes for a Lecture on Whittier. 
 
70 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 with which he read the later volumes of Italy and her Invaders 
 is specially remembered, as also his enjoyment of A Boy's 
 Religion by Rufus M. Jones. 
 
 He loved poetry, and often read aloud a poem by Tennyson 
 or Lowell, or some cantos from In Memoriam, or occasionally 
 Myers' Saint Paul. He enjoyed good fiction, too, and when 
 tired would often turn for refreshment, late in the evening, 
 to a favourite chapter, or to some humorous passage, which 
 occasionally he would read aloud. 
 
 The war in South Africa, 1899-1901, was an inexpressible 
 sorrow to John S. Rowntree. Its dark cloud lay upon his spirit 
 like a heavy weight from which there was no escape. As 
 detailed news arrived of the fighting, the sieges, the burning of 
 farms and the concentration camps, he read with acute pain 
 and indignation, and spoke out in condemnation with a passionate 
 intensity of feeling and conviction that for a time made him 
 unpopular. 
 
 He lectured in many places on "Christian and Non-Christian 
 Patriotism Contrasted," and found, as others found in those days, 
 that whilst the war fever lasted it was almost impossible to obtain 
 a hearing from those who were under its sway, but what he said 
 was a strength and encouragement to others who were striving 
 to resist its influence. 
 
 " The times are inexpressibly sad," he wrote. " All moral 
 causes are at ebb tide. The peace-loving England of twenty 
 years ago has for the time lost her sense of lofty ideals — ^her 
 people are not shocked by the blood-shedding which she is 
 causing in Africa and Asia. A paralysis has fallen upon the 
 churches. War is defended ; slavery, under veiled names, is 
 openly advocated." 
 
 When at last the war came to an end, and taking advantage 
 of the reaction in public feeling Which followed, the Yearly 
 Meeting decided to send a Peace Deputation to its Meetings, 
 he did valuable service as one of its members. 
 
 He wrote a short paper to be read at a meeting of the members 
 of the Deputation before it started on its work, saying that " at 
 
MEMOIR. 71 
 
 the outset of all work it is well for the worker clearly to know what 
 he is going to do, or, at any rate, to aim at doing." 
 
 He pointed out that " if a peaceable spirit in the individual 
 is one of the fruits of a true spiritual experience, then everj'thing 
 which hinders a real subjection to the rule of Christ is likely to 
 diminish individual interest in the cause of peace, both between 
 individuals and nations. When, therefore, there is a lessened 
 interest taken in peace, one of the fruits of the Spirit is less in 
 evidence, and we have the symptoms of diminished spiritual 
 vigour in the body." 
 
 The methods of advocacy he encouraged would now be best 
 indicated, at least in part, by a reference to " The Way of Peace," 
 in Joan M. Fry's book,* which he read with warm approval and 
 sympathy. 
 
 The writing of what John S. Rowntree called his " booklet " 
 The Society of Friends : its Faith and Practice, took up much 
 of his time in the autumn of 1900, and the spring of 1901. Its 
 aim was " to set forth simply and concisely the present day 
 faith and practice of Friends." f 
 
 As the year was closing, the health of his son, James Edward, 
 then living at Southport, began to be a source of great and 
 recurring anxiety, necessitating frequent visits to Southport, 
 in order to cheer and help his son. 
 
 When a little chUd, James Edward had been very delicate. 
 As he grew he developed into a lovable, sunny-natured boy, who 
 faced difficulties with indomitable good humour. An open-air 
 life strengthened his physique ; for many years he enjoyed fully 
 average health and strength and it was hoped that the weakness 
 of his infancy had been entirely surmounted. These hopes 
 of permanent recovery were not to be fulfilled. One breakdown 
 followed another. After a fresh attack of illness in the beginning 
 of 1904, a change to Falmouth was advised. In February, John 
 S. Rowntree and his wife went there in advance to receive the 
 invalid, who was accompanied by his wife and child. But he 
 
 * The Way of Peace and other Papers, by Joan Mary Fry. 
 f See Appendix I. 
 
72 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 grew worse, and after long months of weakness and suffering, 
 he passed peacefully away in October, 1904. 
 
 His frail body enshrined a most healthy spirit. He had a 
 quick sense of humour, with a happy abiUty to look on the bright 
 side of things, and the sad sorrow of his hopeless illness was 
 lightened for others by the brave patience with which it was borne, 
 the cheery interest he took in family doings, and his enjoyment 
 at times of the beauty which surrounded him. The unfailing 
 kindness and sympathy shown by Falmouth Friends were a greater 
 help than can be told. They gave John S. Rowntree a warm 
 welcome at their meetings. Even the little children liked to 
 come, for they counted on hearing something from him that they 
 could understand and enjoy. It is remembered that one day he 
 told the children the story of Ralph the Rover, of which he had 
 been reminded by the bell on the easternmost Manacle Rocks, 
 — and applied it to the shipwreck of character. And in 
 this connection it may be mentioned also that at one week-day 
 meeting at York, when there were only three children present, 
 he gave them an inspiring little children's sermon, telling 
 them the story of the Russian soldier who saved a comrade from 
 freezing to death by rubbing him and keeping his limbs in 
 movement, and found that in doing this his own numbness had 
 passed away. 
 
 The parents stayed on with their son until May, and when 
 obliged to return home, the father felt, in the constant thought 
 of his son, " almost closer," as he told him, than when with him, 
 and " withheld from speaking much by the fulness of one's feeling," 
 but his tender, almost daily messages of love and cheer are too 
 sacred and personal for publication. Those who stayed at 
 Mount Villas this summer, whilst it lay under the shadow of 
 impending loss, were conscious of a ruling peace, a trustful, quiet 
 sense that all was well. 
 
 Through pressing family claims and anxieties, the great 
 controversy which was raging over what he considered the 
 retrogressive Education Act of 1902 weighed much upon his 
 spirit. Behind the points then at issue between those who 
 
MEMOIR. 73 
 
 differed as to the right course for Free Churchmen to take in regard 
 to it, he saw the background of the past, and its warning lessons 
 against any attempt on the part of the Church to dictate or enforce 
 a uniformity of action on its members. He differed from those 
 who took for granted that the time-honoured action of Friends 
 in the past who had refused to pay tithes and enforced the hke 
 refusal upon others, had been the best and wisest course. But 
 he had such a keen sense of the great and glaring injustice 
 of the Bill, that any conscientious protest against it had, as 
 such, his warm sympathy, even though he could not himself 
 have taken the same line of protest. 
 
 He explained his own position in letters to The Friend, during 
 1902 and 1903. The historical argument is too long to quote, 
 but as a minor consideration he added : — 
 
 " After paying a is. 3d. Income Tax for the South African War, 
 one is conscious of some sense of disproportion in refusing a rate for 
 a school, even if it is carried on upon principles, and teaches dogmas 
 which one utterly disapproves of. Many readers of The Friend are 
 probably in the same position as the writer in having subscribed to the 
 Church school of the village for many years, knowing it was preferable 
 for the children to be taught there than not at all. It strikes one as 
 odd, to use no stronger term, when your school subscription ceases 
 to refuse payment of the school rate." 
 
 He was, however, far more in sympathy with those who 
 conscientiously refused payment of the Education rate, and 
 suffered for their refusal, than with those who merely criticised. 
 
 He wrote : — 
 
 " It is no matter of surprise, or of regret, to find that many of your 
 readers feel conscientiously restrained from -paymg the Education 
 rate, whilst others believe they are bound to do so. I admire the 
 action of the Wesleyan Conference in expressing sympathy with those 
 who suflEer in obedience to conscience, whilst giving no official judg- 
 ment either favourable or adverse to the policy of Passive Resistance ; 
 and think the Friends' Yearly Meeting would have done wisely had 
 it adopted a similar minute." 
 
 He refused to take any part in enforcing the education rate 
 upon those who could not conscientiously pay it, and felt this 
 
74 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 " a perfectly legitimate position " for magistrates to occupy, " even 
 should it involve any loss of business, or the removal of their 
 names from the roll of magistrates." 
 
 He reminded Friends that 
 " the great revolution of public opinion in the direction of religious 
 liberty between 1660 and 1689 was materially helped by the un- 
 willingness and even, in some cases, by the refusal, of Church of 
 England magistrates to enforce upon Friends and other Noncon- 
 formists the cruel penalties to which they were legally liable." 
 
 When a number of Passive Resisters were summoned for 
 non-payment of the rate, it was a satisfaction to John S. Rowntree 
 and his family to show their sjTmpathy publicly by being present, 
 and on this occasion the Resisters were treated with perfect 
 courtesy. 
 
 Whilst this controversy was raging, John S. Rowntree was 
 quietly working in his own way, and constructively, for the 
 religious education of the children for whom Friends are most 
 directly responsible. It was his deep interest in this question 
 which led about this time (igoo-1904) to such long and exhaustive 
 inquiry into the Friends' system of registration. For him 
 statistics were all ahve with significance. He saw the human 
 facts which lay behind them, and he had been concerned to find, 
 as the result of much patient investigation, that year by year 
 an increasing number of children connected with Friends, but 
 not registered as members because only one parent was a member, 
 had largely missed coming under the influence of Friends. The 
 children had been sent more and more to the public elementary 
 schools, and excellent as the general education received there 
 may have been, John S. Rowntree believed that many of these 
 children had really come less under religious influence than 
 children belonging to other Christian denominations whose 
 Sunday Schools they were expected to attend. 
 
 He believed that 
 
 " the right education and Christian nurture of these children is as 
 important both for their own welfare and for the future of the Society 
 as is that of children who are in membership, and that it demands 
 more attention than it is receiving." 
 
MEMOIR. 75 
 
 His Quarterly Meeting took up the subject and devoted much 
 attention to it, bringing it before the Yearly Meeting in 1903. 
 It was referred to the Meeting for Sufferings " for further inves- 
 tigation and careful consideration " — ^which has resulted in 
 bringing the needs of the children unregistered as members — ^the 
 primary motive of the whole inquiry — ^before the attention of the 
 Society at large.* 
 
 Some of John S. Rowntree's suggestions as to possible methods 
 of meeting these needs will be found in his article on the educa- 
 tional policy of Friends, f 
 
 He always Uked to make the Educational Trust Funds of 
 the Society as widely available as possible for the help of such 
 children. 
 
 He welcomed the reconstituted Central Education Committee 
 in 1902, giving the work of its secretaries his hearty sympathy 
 and accepting the post of treasurer. 
 
 He took a large view of the duties of a treasurer, applying 
 to them the spirit of the words, " Do not pray for tasks equal to 
 your powers, but for powers equal to your tasks." He thought 
 that a treasurer should not content himself with making the 
 
 * " The Meeting for Sufferings appointed the Regislration Committee, 
 which reported through it to the Y.M. of 1904. (See Y.M. Minutes and 
 Proceedings, 1904, pp. 24-31.) John S. Rowntree took great interest in the 
 preparation of this report, and I was closely associated with him in it. No 
 one had a better knowledge of statistics respecting the Society, nor a 
 better understanding of the uses to which they could be put. The Com- 
 mittee recommended that the present system of registration be 
 continued. 
 
 Turning from the subject of registration, the Committee proceeded to 
 deal with the present circumstances of the Society in connection with the 
 large number of children not registered as members, and of whom the 
 Society has taken but little notice until they have commenced attendance of 
 Meetings. The Committee recommended the Y.M. to address a memorandum 
 on the subject to subordinate Meetings. (This was left to the Central 
 Education Committee.) 
 
 The next recommendation the Y.M. accepted, commending it to the 
 Monthly Meetings. It proposed that Monthly Meetings should keep lists 
 of all children identified with their congregations whether in membership 
 or not. 
 
 The third recommendation was that the eleventh Query should be altered, 
 and this was adopted, the words ' the young people in your different con- 
 gregations,' taking the place of " your younger members.' " — [Note by 
 Isaac Sharp.] 
 
 f Chapter x. 
 
76 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 most of the sums entrusted to him, but should help to raise them, 
 making the need of funds so plain and appealing by clear 
 statements, that they cannot be withheld. A generous giver 
 himself, he had great faith in the generosity of Friends, and 
 believed that funds wiU always be forthcoming when Friends 
 are satisfied as to the need for them, and the manner of their 
 proposed expenditure. He would urge the duty of readiness, 
 where there is an increasing income, to increase subscriptions 
 proportionately. He attached great importance to perfect 
 exactitude in the charge of other people's money. 
 
 When acting as trustee for an individual, or dealing with 
 some small fund, he gave his best thought and judgment 
 to the matter in hand, with as much care as when dealing, as a 
 Coimcillor, with City finances, or, as Director, giving valued 
 guidance to the affairs of the Friends' Provident Institution. 
 
 To turn to the happy home life, where his character shone 
 most brightly. A " centred and tranquil spirit " prevailed. 
 It was the realisation of Whittier's aspiration : — 
 
 " And let our ordered lives confess 
 The beauty of Thy peace." 
 
 There was an absence of anything like rush or haste. The calm, 
 unhurried judgment shown in regard to great matters was just 
 as striking in the everyday affairs of life. 
 
 One recalls so many things. The pleasant leisurely breakfast 
 (to which, as to everything else, he was habitually punctual) 
 when the family letters were read and talked over, and absent 
 members seemed linked in spirit with the circle round the table. 
 The details of plans for the day were considered or announced, 
 and often would the humorous comments of the head of the 
 household evoke merriment and laughter. It was delightful to 
 see the smile break out on his grave face, accompanied by kindling 
 eyes and deepening colour, lighting up his countenance in a 
 wonderful way as he looked into your eyes for response and 
 ss^mpathy, till the amusement subsided, and his usual " gathered " 
 expression returned. 
 
MEMOIR. 77 
 
 This word may need explanation. John S. Rowntree's 
 strong sense of order and fitness made him keenly alive to any 
 kind of oddity or peculiarity. One way in which this was sym- 
 pathetically shown was in the interest he took in dialect, the 
 dialect of a particular period, or Church, or of an individual. 
 
 Some of the frequent expressions of the early Friends had 
 struck him as so apt and fitting that he would quote them often, 
 and they passed into very expressive family use. The word 
 " gathered," was often chosen to describe a calm and 
 collected state of mind, or way of doing things, paying visits 
 for instance, and it represented a kind of ideal to be aimed at. 
 The visitor to John S. Rowntree's home, who might happen to 
 hear this word in use, could hardly fail to notice how descriptive 
 it was of his character, methods and surroundings. 
 
 Often there had already been a walk round the garden, and 
 perhaps the daily weather observations had been taken, and these 
 were always a topic of interest. 
 
 Then came the family Bible-reading, always impressive in 
 its deep reverence and earnestness of tone. 
 
 Before going out to fufill his usual engagements, there were 
 often letters to be answered in the library, where, amongst num- 
 berless histories and biographies, were ranged the thick volumes 
 in which, year by year, its " Friend " literature was bound 
 together, the various reports and papers issued by the Society, 
 the reports of its educational, missionary, and philanthropic 
 associations, and often pamphlets or lectures of interest by 
 individual Friends — all preserved, as if they were family records, 
 for frequent reference in his historical work and preparation of 
 pamphlets and lectures. 
 
 After the early nineties, when he had begun to use a bicycle, he 
 would often cycle to the city. He used his experience as a cyclist 
 as another illustration of a favourite theme — the impossibility 
 of standing still — ^the necessity for very life and safety of always 
 going forward. In one of his unpublished lectures, the life of 
 Ignatius Loyola was used to emphasise the same thought. He 
 would dwell upon the fact that the Church of Rome, when almost 
 
78 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 at the lowest ebb, and when its prospects were more discouraging 
 than those of Friends were at their worst, was yet so revived by 
 the aggressive policy started by Loyola, that from numberless 
 dangers it emerged vigorous and strong. And he would point 
 out that weapons powerful for evil, or for a very doubtful good, 
 " would be still more potent in the cause of Truth." He was also 
 greatly interested in Loyola's power of government, and thought 
 the study of his life useful, for this reason, to those who have 
 to govern others. 
 
 A talk with John S. Rowntree, when his mind was free for it, 
 was a delightful experience. He helped one to get to the heart 
 of things, and seemed to bring the smallest practical problems of 
 Ufe out into the clear daylight, as it were, and made them take 
 their right places in relation to larger matters of life and duty. A 
 difi&culty which might perhaps have been exaggerated in one's 
 thoughts, and have loomed too large through being pondered 
 over closely and exclusively, would be quickly put into a truer 
 perspective and reduced to its right proportions. 
 
 To some of us who knew him well, it came to be one of the 
 privileges of our lives to be able to consult him freely about almost 
 any kind of perplexity. He Uved amongst the realities, and so 
 his talk was real and vital. It was not that he always said striking 
 or memorable things — quite otherwise, — ^nor did he offer direct 
 advice, but he seemed to have the power, somehow, of helping one 
 to come into a clearer atmosphere, and a higher point of view, 
 from which it was possible to see for one's self what had not, 
 perhaps, been clear before ; and so, whUst it is not easy now to 
 recall distinctly the course of particular conversations, the im- 
 pression left behind is one of help and uplifting. 
 
 He had to the full the child's simplicity and single-heartedness, 
 the child's fresh, pure delight in Uttle things, and in the 
 beauties of life and nature. But he had not the child's faculty of 
 happy self-abandonment. Like Paul, who felt " the care of all 
 the Churches " on him, he could no more lay aside the sense of 
 responsibility for others, than a mother can forget her responsi- 
 bility for her child. 
 
MEMOIR. 79 
 
 Had he lived in Gideon's day, he would inevitably have been 
 one of the three hundred who would not give themselves up 
 entirely to the luxury of quenching their thirst, but who, as they 
 drank, continued prompt, alert and watchful, ready for any sur- 
 prise or movement of the foe. For, as he used to say, and seemed 
 always to realise, where there is " an open door " " there are many 
 adversaries " also. Perhaps it was the sense of this, and a con- 
 sciousness of the greatness of an opportunity, and the danger of 
 missing it, which often made him grave and silent. 
 
 His thought of others showed itself in his manner of reading. 
 He could not read a book through without asking himself what 
 its influence on other minds would be. It was impossible to him 
 to take up a work of one-sided or exaggerated character, or one 
 of mingled truth and error, simply to enjoy the good in it, and 
 forget aU the rest. His habit of looking at things as a whole 
 was too strong for this, and any unsatisfactory element in a book 
 likely to be much read was a matter of concern to him. For 
 unconsciously he credited others with all his own orderly com- 
 pleteness of thought and openness to impressions in their totality ; 
 whilst readers of another type of mind may see only what appeals 
 to them, and quite untouched by anything of an opposite 
 character, may iind, in the spirit of the gleaner, precious grains 
 of truth in the midst of chaff and stubble. 
 
 He sometimes read a book which he would not otherwise 
 have cared to read, simply for the sake of understanding the 
 position of some one who had been influenced by it. 
 
 He thought nothing a waste of time which might tend to keep 
 and cultivate a fellowship with hearts. 
 
 Whilst he recognised that every period of life, as every position, 
 has its own difficulties, he entered with specid sympathy into the 
 inward troubles of his brother ministers. There are those who, 
 under the weight of a desolating sorrow, or a weakening illness, 
 have found themselves, like some of the saintliest souls of the 
 past, humbled, and bowed down by a sense of inability to lay hold, 
 in conscious realisation, of the truths to which they have often 
 directed others in like circumstances. Such men, who, perplexed 
 
80 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 and disappointed, have questioned themselves anxiously as to the 
 cause, have found that when they could speak to no one else, they 
 could lay bare their hearts to him, sure of his comprehending 
 sympathy, sure that he would not misunderstand — far less 
 condemn them. 
 
 Whilst JohnS. Rowntree had a deep conviction of the need 
 for prayer, he had also a very comprehending sense of the diffi- 
 culties of those who do not find it easy to pray. 
 
 One of his friends remembers how, in a time of much numbness 
 of feeling, following on the exhaustion of a great sorrow, she told 
 him it seemed almost impossible to pray with any living sense of 
 reality. Prayer seemed a mere form, she said, and whilst it con- 
 tinued to be so, would it not be more honest to give it up altogether 
 for a time ? 
 
 Almost to her surprise, she found her difficulty perfectly 
 understood, and a sense of new spiritual possibility and help came 
 to her as he reminded her of the value, in merely human relations, 
 of the morning and evening greeting between children and their 
 parents. Often, it may happen that the child has really nothing 
 to say beyond the usual greeting, words which mean the acknow- 
 ledgement of a relationship, but this alone, he pleaded, is of high 
 value, keeping the sense of a great and vital fact fresh and warm, 
 so that it cannot be ignored or forgotten. He urged that if this is 
 true in the merely human relationship, how much more in that 
 which is Divine and spiritual, that which alone can give true 
 meaning and reality to human life. 
 
 But it would be untrue to imply that his conversation was 
 always of a serious character. One who lived in his family for 
 years as governess to his younger children, writes : — 
 
 " Wherever he was there was peace and kindliness and true 
 sympathy ; and his quaint humour and enjoyment of anything 
 humorous one can never forget.'' 
 
 So we see that even after the lapse of many years, this " en- 
 joyment of anything humorous " is recalled as one of his most 
 constant characteristics. It would show itself in unexpected 
 ways. He would raise a smile even in the Yearly Meeting by 
 
MEMOIR. 8l 
 
 a reference to some quaint, unusual phrase, , or some curious 
 episode in the past. Fielden Thorp remembers that on one 
 occasion, during a Quarterly Meeting, several leading women. 
 Friends, for some unexplained reason, failed to take their usual 
 seats at the head of the meeting. Many honoured places were 
 left conspicuously empty, and a puzzled inquirer, on looking round, 
 might discover their accustomed occupants gathered near the door. 
 In an address that morning, John S. Rowntree took occasion to 
 refer to the Queen of Sheba's visit to Solomon, and her wondering 
 admiration of everything she saw, including even " the sitting of 
 his servants." " We were not told anything," he said, " about 
 the manner in which this was carried out, but one thing was clear, 
 the King's servants must have been sitting in their right places." 
 There was nothing in his tone or manner to indicate that his remark 
 had reference to any present occasion. But the hint was taken, 
 and those present at the next session were all " sitting in their 
 right places." 
 
 He had always a great love of order. With all his real 
 simplicity of nature, there was also something stately and royal 
 iti his feeling about life. He liked every function and event to have 
 its due honour, and every duty to be " worthily " fulfilled. It 
 shocked his taste, his sense of the fitness of things, to have 
 things slurred over, or done anyhow. Some will remember his 
 taking, as the starting point of a sermon those words of Glad- 
 stone's quoted in the last sentence of John Morley's biography : — 
 
 " Be inspired with the behef that Hfe is a great and noble calling ; 
 not a mean and grovelling thing that we are to shuffle through as we 
 can, but an elevated and lofty destiny." 
 
 An occasional visitor at Mount Villas writes : — 
 
 " When I first knew John S. Rowntree I am afraid I felt him a 
 formidable man to talk to : one so learned and wise could hardly be 
 interested, so I imagined, in commonplace concerns, or in one's 
 thoughts about them. 
 
 " When I came to know him better, I wondered how I could have 
 felt like this. I found that if, instead of waiting for him to introduce 
 some great and important topic of his own, one began to talk to him 
 
 7 
 
82 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 simply about quite everyday matters, he was quickly and easily 
 interested, and so delightfully sympathetic. I noticed, too, that 
 simple-hearted people — children, and poor men and women, were 
 at home with him immediately, and instinctively sure of his sympathy. 
 
 " I remember once, after a week-day morning meeting, he kindly 
 took me to see some old buildings in the city, and afterwards, on our 
 way back to his home, he pointed out some almshouses for women, 
 and stopped at the door of one to ask if I might see the interior. 
 The day was cold, and the old woman had a beautifully clear fire 
 burning. She asked us to sit down, and John S. Rowntree praised 
 her fire, and its perfect freedom from dust and ash. She was gratified 
 and launched into explanations of her methods, and then, somehow, 
 she began to pour out the story of her life, one of many losses and 
 much sorrow. 
 
 " We had called, as we thought, for a morrientary glance at the 
 room, and it was inconvenient to stop — ^but he would not interrupt 
 her ; he listened quietly, but with speaking sympathy in his face, 
 till the story came to an end, and then said a few kind words which 
 brought the tears to her eyes as we rose to leave. 
 
 " He was a delightful companion in a country walk. He seemed 
 to notice everything and enjoy everything with such keen interest 
 and enthusiasm, and what one saw reminded him so often of interest- 
 ing associations and memories. He seemed always to have 
 ' Amongst least things 
 An under-sense of greatest,' 
 and very simply and naturally the talk would often glide on to the 
 most real things of all. 
 
 " I remember, too, delightful talks round the drawing-room 
 fire, on the rare evenings when he was at liberty. 
 
 " Often the talk would be about some question of Biblical in- 
 terpretation, or of theology, for though he kept theological definitions 
 out of his sermons, he gave much time and thought to such subjects. 
 He said once that he had been struck with some remarks by Frederick 
 D. Maurice on what we are told of the work and influence of the 
 Holy Spirit. ' He shall not speak of Himself, but shall take of mine, 
 and show it unto you.'* 
 
 * " We should not, perhaps, be able to make out the force of the words, 
 ' He shall not speak of Himself,' if the history of the Church and the world 
 had not expounded them. Again and again there have been teachers in 
 the Church who have spoken loudly of an illuminating Spirit. They have 
 said that a dispensation of the Spirit had come, which made the old Gospel 
 of Jesus Christ poor and obsolete ; they have said that now the Spirit was 
 all that men had to think of or believe in. So spoke a portion of the Fran- 
 ciscans, in the thirteenth century ; some of the brethren and sisters of the 
 Free Spirit, in the fourteenth ; some of the Anabaptists, in the sixteenth ; 
 some of the Quakers in the seventeenth ; so speak not a few who are revolting 
 
MEMOIR. 83 
 
 " He thought that Friends in the past had sometimes failed to 
 recognise this. They had laid stress on ' perceptible ' guidance, 
 on an experience of spiritual revelation, rather than on the truth 
 revealed. And thus, sometimes, they had practically denied the 
 freedom of the human will, and spoken as though man were a helpless 
 puppet in the hands of a higher will. 
 
 " Whatever may be the deepest truth of human personality, 
 and however men may try to express it in words, whether as being 
 ' conjunct ' with the Divine, or by some other term, John S. 
 Rowntree said that, as a fact of human experience, man not only 
 acts freely, but for his own good and development he is allowed to 
 feel often as if he were acting alone ; as a little chUd, learning to 
 walk, is encouraged to depend upon himself, left, as he thinks, to run 
 alone, though another's arms, unseen, are close behind him all the 
 time, ' a hand-breadth off,' he said, reminding us of the lines — 
 
 " ' . . . God's all, man's nought : 
 But also, God, whose pleasure brought 
 
 Man into being, stands away 
 
 As it were a handbreadth off, to give 
 
 Room for the newly-made to live. 
 
 And look at him from a place apart.' 
 
 " He did not often refer to Browning, but on this occasion he went, I 
 think, to the bookcase to find the passage in Christmas Eve which he 
 has quoted in one or more of his pamphlets. 
 
 " Sometimes he would talk about the Mystics, in whom he had 
 long taken great interest. Or he would refer to some hymn to which 
 he was giving special consideration. He had a very wide knowledge 
 of hymns, and took great interest in comparing lines written by men 
 of widely differing theological standpoints, as evidence of the unity 
 of spirit underlying all intellectual divergence, amongst those who 
 truly live the Christian life. 
 
 " Often the talk would be on lighter subjects. He would remind 
 us of facts of historical or archaeological interest, or he would give 
 
 against materialism, without having found any safe standing ground from 
 which to oppose it, in our own. The Spirit in such men speaks of ' itself.' 
 Such a Spirit, our Lord says, is not the Holy Spirit ; for He will speak 
 whatsoever things He hears ; He will bring to us the message of a Father, 
 from whom He comes. He will not make us impatient of a Lord and Ruler, 
 but desirous of one, eager to give up ourselves to his guidance, eager to get 
 rid of our own fancies and conceits, and to enter more into fellowship with 
 all men. He will not allow us to be satisfied with our advanced knowledge 
 or great discoveries, but will always be showing us things that are coming ; 
 giving us an apprehension of truths that we have not yet reached, though 
 they be truths which are ' the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.' " 
 F. D. Maurice, Gospel of St. John, pp. 402-3. 
 
84 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 examples of curiosities of dialect. Some of us remember his noting 
 with amusement the favourite adjective of a Westmorland guide 
 with whom everything notable was something ' serious ' ; for example, 
 a large quarry passed on the way was " a very serious quarry ' ; or again, 
 a Yorkshire phrase sometimes used in advising a stranger in his 
 choice of route : ' This way is the shortest but that is the gainest,' 
 i.e. the best and therefore the quickest. 
 
 " He had a large fund of racy stories, and could tell them 
 delightfully. One evening he told with much zest of a strange mala- 
 propism of which he had been made the subject. He had been asked 
 to speak at a little out-of-the-way chapel where, I think, the expected 
 preacher had been unable to come. 
 
 " In the course of the service, a good man in the congregation, 
 probably not possessed of much mental culture, offered thanks for 
 the presence and help of their visitor ' clothed, and in his right 
 mind.' 
 
 " No doubt the speaker had a really fine perception of harmony 
 and Tightness of thought in what he had been hearing, but his powers 
 of expression were unequal to the task of making this clear. 
 
 " I think I never knew any man with a more evenly balanced 
 mind than John S. Rowntree, or more free from any tendency to fall 
 into ' the falsehood of extremes.' I used to think it would have been 
 impossible to hypnotise him ; and his ' tranquil strength ' was shown 
 in refusing to be drawn into any action until he felt satisfied that 
 it was right. 
 
 " He would do nothing whilst in doubt. But when he saw his 
 way his action was always practical and full of strong common- 
 sense. 
 
 " In his later years of failing strength, there were times when 
 his head was too tired to go on working, too tired even for the lightest 
 reading, and then he would often turn to some game for two, and 
 prefer to play it alone, taking each side himself in turn, whilst 
 conversation or evening music was going on. I used to feel it 
 instructive to see how quietiy he accepted the fact of fatigue without 
 complaint, and did not feel it beneath him to try such a simple 
 restorative as a child's game, like Halma. With chsiracteristic 
 impartiality he held the balance evenly between the two sides 
 never favouring either, and never knew himself till near the end which 
 side would win. 
 
 " With all his power he was even more dependent than most 
 men on home sympathy for the completeness of his happiness ; and 
 though there was a refreshing independence of thought and taste in 
 his home circle, and freedom of mutual comment, and playful criticism, 
 yet never was a man more loyally supported by his family in his 
 
MEMOIR. 85 
 
 undertakings, and never was any man more grateful than he for the 
 fellowship and help of wife and children, or more ready to acknow- 
 ledge what he owed to them. 
 
 " At home, he seemed hardly his fuU self without his wife, and 
 missed her keenly whenever she was absent. He liked to have her 
 companionship on his journeys, and at the meetings he attended. 
 
 " With strong and tender sympathy she was ready for every 
 requirement, and dowered with a courage and resource that rose 
 to every emergency. Well for him that her gracious and sustaining 
 presence was with him to the end ! " 
 
 Though very unwell in the autumn of 1903, John S. Rowntree 
 recovered sufficiently to preside, as was desired, over the Ministry 
 Conference held at York in November. The office he then filled 
 debarred him from the full expression of his own views ; but 
 afterwards, at the request of its editor, he wrote an article for the 
 Friends' Quarterly Examiner, setting forth the place and abiding 
 necessity of Ministry. 
 
 " It seemed to afford the opportunity," he wrote to a corres- 
 pondent, " for saying some things that one felt had not been said 
 in the Conference. I stall feel rather strongly that its principal 
 advantages wiU be likely to arise if it directs the minds of Friends to 
 more careful thought respecting the Christian Ministry." 
 
 As a friend has remarked, John S. Rowntree had " an immense 
 sense of the importance of right human arrangements, and wise 
 organisation in the Christian Church. Those who have listened 
 to his public addresses, or read his pamphlets, know how often, 
 and how earnestly, he dwelt upon this thought,* how he would 
 illustrate it by the examples of Whitefield and Wesley — the work 
 of the one comparatively evanescent, the work of the other, 
 permanent, through wise organisation." 
 
 In 1896, he wrote : — 
 
 " Individually, Friends are and have been strong ; corporately, 
 they are and have been weak. . . . Friends wUl miss one of the 
 cardinal lessons of their history, if they do not recognise congregational 
 or corporate faithfulness, as that which loudly demands more attention 
 than it has usually received at their hands." 
 
 * See chapter vi. 
 
86 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 Since this was written, we have, as a body, become more aUve 
 to the need to which he pointed, and " the sense of Christian 
 fellowship is now taking more hold of us," and imparting a new 
 meaning and interest to our business meetings and committees, 
 as to many other things. 
 
 John S. Rowntree had long been accustomed to give much 
 time and thought, not only to the large problems which came 
 before Friends, but to the practical details of meetings for the 
 transaction of Church affairs. 
 
 He would consider beforehand the various matters which 
 were to come forward for consideration or decision, and try 
 to see the best course to be taken with regard to them. He 
 desired flexibility of method, a wise readiness to adapt Church 
 arrangements to varying needs and circumstances, and when an 
 alteration was to be made, or a fresh step taken, he thought it 
 abundantly worth while to make any amount of effort or enquiry 
 to find out the best plan or method of procedure. He shared 
 John Wilhelm Rowntree's desire to make the business as well as the 
 devotional meetings of Friends as widely educational as possible, 
 and to have attenders invited to them, and he cordially supported 
 the proposal to try occasional week-end Quarterly Meetings. 
 
 He would think over the programme for a Quarterly Meeting, 
 very carefully, desiring that it should make as wide an appeal as 
 possible. He liked the printed programme to be effectively 
 arranged and attractive in appearance, as well as in its 
 contents. 
 
 Altogether, he used to seem a necessary part of his Quarterly 
 Meeting. He was a clear and effective speaker, though in dis- 
 cussion or argument his manner may sometimes have been more 
 convincing than persuasive. He stated his belief simply and 
 forcibly, giving his reasons fully for any conclusion he had come 
 to, relying altogether on these reasons — ^not on any mode of 
 presentation — ^for the assent of his hearers, honouring them too 
 much to try to please or to persuade. When he spoke, the 
 subject made its worth and greatness felt, and revealed some- 
 thing of its true proportions and relations. 
 
MEMOIR. 87 
 
 It might be that others could not always come to the same 
 conclusion as he did. It might be possible, sometimes, to put 
 another interpretation on the facts or the considerations he 
 advanced, but these were so well weighed and important, that it 
 was always felt they must receive attention. They could never 
 be ignored. 
 
 Few things gladdened him more than any fresh proof that his 
 younger Friends had the welfare of their congregation and their 
 Church at heart. Any new and happy suggestion as to ways in 
 which the sense of fellowship might be shown or extended was a 
 keen pleasure to him, as at the last Quarterly Meeting at which 
 he was present, when one of the younger Friends said how much 
 those prevented by illness from attending had been missed, and 
 proposed the appointment of one or two Friends to take a message 
 of S5mipathy from the Meeting and to tell of its interests. 
 
 It was a delight to him to encourage any effort for the good 
 of others, and he used to feel and say that many of the young 
 people were able to be of far more service than he had ever been. 
 When he was out of York he would remember the engagements 
 and plans of those at home, and follow their doings with sym- 
 pathy and prayer. When referring to a particular gathering he 
 would sometimes express the hope that " as the Friends used 
 to say, ' Truth was in dominion.' " 
 
 Only a few weeks before his death he wrote to a daughter who 
 was attending a series of meetings at Wakefield — 
 
 " . . . We constantly think of you and your companions in 
 these meetings at Wakefield, and hope they may go on satisfactorily, 
 I well know how many questionings and provings of faith arise in 
 the prosecution of such a service. We can only ask that all needed 
 strength may be granted you." 
 
 His constant sense of the danger of less worthy motives 
 mingling with the higher in any public line of service, perhaps 
 deepened the honour he felt for forms of help and usefulness which 
 rarely win the notice and praise of men, and he was often inclined 
 to think that in reality when " the last shall be first " they may 
 prove to have been of higher value than work that might seem 
 
88 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 more spiritual and important. The frequency with which he 
 would dwell on this thought in his public ministry has already 
 been referred to, and it was also often a theme of his conversation 
 and correspondence. He would sometimes refer to Stephen 
 Crisp, and his sense of " call " to help people, not only spiritually, 
 but in their business concerns, and to " be as a staff to the weak 
 in these things."* 
 
 John S. Rowntree occasionally spoke of the many who feel 
 their need of wise advice and guidance in matters of ^business, but 
 know no one of whom they dare ask it ; he would refer to those 
 amongst the poor who are involved in difficulties and perplexi- 
 ties from which they might soon be set free by any one possessed 
 of business or legal knowledge, and he would rejoice when he 
 heard of any one qualified giving himself to this high service, as 
 he thought it. 
 
 Again, he would refer to the keeping of the Society's accounts, 
 or those of an Association, as a most valuable and important 
 service. 
 
 He had the needs of individuals often on his heart, and would 
 speak of these needs to those who he thought might do something 
 to meet them. He remembered the lonely ones, the aged and 
 feeble, and the chronic invalids to whom a call from a bright and 
 sympathetic visitor is a very real help. He thought some in the 
 habit of giving such help, need not confine it to members of their 
 own meeting, but might sometimes feel the call to visit Friends 
 in other places, to whom a fresh face, an unaccustomed 
 presence, might bring a rare and most welcome help and 
 pleasure. 
 
 John S. Rowntree was interested in the starting of The Journal 
 of the Friends' Historical Society, and wrote a Foreword for it, 
 bespeakii^ for the new venture " a wide and cordial support." 
 
 His own interest in historical research, like his enjoyment of 
 nature, remained keen and fresh to the end of his life. 
 
 His letters to his children often contained some brief nature 
 note. 
 
 * Page 249. 
 
MEMOIR. 89 
 
 Writing from StrathpefEer Spa, 22nd August, 1904, he said — 
 
 " In the Spa Hotel garden here, the flowering rush is finely in 
 bloom. It is the only flower in Britain, I believe, with nine stamens. 
 It used to grow in the Foss, but I fear is now exterminated. I believe 
 it grows profusely in Holland." 
 
 Again, from York, on the 6th April, 1905 — 
 
 " The temperature has been down to 18 degrees on the ground 
 and 26 degrees in the air. When the sun rose this morning, 
 Knavesmire wEis one sheet of white snow. It was rather interesting 
 that even then in the twilight the thrushes were singing in our front 
 garden; now (ten o'clock) the sun is very bright." 
 
 . . . " On Saturday afternoon (April ist) we were very much 
 interested when Edith observed a swallow flying over the brick- 
 ponds. Mamma and I went down and watched it for some time ; 
 apparently it was a sand martin, and I think it is ten or fifteen 
 years since we saw one so early." 
 
 12th April. "Yesterday afternoon the swallows were 
 over the brick-ponds. We have looked many times for them since 
 the first, but have never seen any again till yesterday." 
 
 During these later years of his life little grandchildren 
 brought a new sunshine mto the home, and he received them with 
 a tender welcome peculiarly his own. He had a great reverence 
 for childhood. Those who knew him well can never forget the 
 honour he rendered to every little child, his respect for its indi- 
 viduality, and the readiness with which he gave himself up, as if 
 he had nothing else to do, to interesting or playing with one of his 
 grandchildren. 
 
 After the great sorrow of John Wilhelm Rowntree's death in 
 the Spring of 1905, he had the unexpected pleasure of a long 
 visit from his youngest daughter, Hilda M. Robson, a Medical 
 Missionary in India, who was obliged to return home for a much 
 needed rest. It was a great comfort to him to watch the gradual 
 return of strength, and a little later, to welcome her husband 
 also. 
 
 In the spring of 1906 he gave a lecture at Manchester on " The 
 Silence of Scripture." He referred, amongst other things, to 
 " the scanty information given us about man's condition after 
 
go JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 the death of the body, probably because at present we could not 
 understand more." He added—" How notable it is that whilst 
 one whole book of the New Testament is devoted to the acts of 
 the Apostles, hardly any space is given to the circumstances of 
 their deaths," and he thought it must have been intended " that 
 Christian people should recognise that the circumstances of death 
 are of very little account, in comparison with the character of 
 life." 
 
 He was able to enter into the interests of the Whitsuntide- 
 Gathering of Old Scholars at York, and to preach one of his 
 powerful sermons, but immediately afterwards he was attacked 
 by serious iQness which brought him very low. It affected the 
 springs of nervous strength and vitality, and the consequent 
 physical depression made his illness specially distressing. He 
 did not escape the painful sense of failure which is the worst part 
 of severe nervous depression. 
 
 " During my present weak state," he wrote to one of his sons 
 — 26th August, 1906, " I have been deeply sensible of the f aultiness 
 of much of my religious and philanthropic work." Still, he found 
 comfort, when he could do little or nothing himself, in encoura- 
 ging the service of others, and especially what we are in the habit 
 of speaking of as the " humbler " kinds of service. If " the 
 wisest word man reaches is the humblest he can speak," — if a 
 time of deep personal humbling and an added sense of the need 
 of absolute dependence on Christ has again and again been the 
 prelude and preparation for some new and blessed service for 
 man — may it not be that when the same experience comes, as it 
 sometimes does, even to the best and holiest, near the close of life, 
 that this also is a preparation for some new and joyful service 
 beyond ? 
 
 Very slowly, a measure of strength came back for a time, but 
 along with it a great sense of the uncertainty and brevity of life. 
 After months of enforced absence from meeting, he was able in 
 the autumn to resume his attendance, and after sitting for some 
 weeks at the bottom of the meeting, again to take his place in the 
 gallery, and in November, to his own surprise and the joy of his 
 
MEMOIR. 91 
 
 friends, again to preach. At Christmas time he chose Whittier's 
 At Last for a printed greeting to his friends. 
 
 He entered with interest into the varied engagements of the 
 winter Quarterly Meeting at York, January, 1907, being 
 remarkably weU, for him, at the time. It was the last gathering 
 of the Quarterly Meeting on Ministry and Oversight,* and he had 
 it much on his heart to encourage everyone to faithfulness in quiet 
 study of Scripture, meditation and prayer. He spoke also in 
 one of the morning meetings for worship. 
 
 The Lord Mayor of the city died while the Quarterly Meeting 
 was in progress, and John S. Rowntree made feeling reference to 
 this in the business meeting, proposing the adoption of a minute 
 expressive of the sympathy of the meeting with the Lady Mayoress 
 and her family. A few days later he attended the funeral of the 
 Lord Mayor, walking to the Minster in procession with his fellow 
 Magistrates. 
 
 He greatly enjoyed the company of relatives and friends at his 
 home during the Quarterly Meeting, and on the closing day of 
 their visit he chose Psalm ciii. for the morning reading, and 
 spoke with much feeling and impressiveness of the help given 
 during the past few days, and of his sense of the privilege of the 
 Christian fellowship they had enjoyed. 
 
 Though at times he felt weak and weary, there was no flagging 
 in his interests. 
 
 Under date 8th February, 1907, he wrote : — 
 
 " You would be very much interested in seeing the birds in our 
 garden trees. As our lunch finished we noticed that in one of the 
 front hoUy trees were three redwings and five thrushes. The sun 
 rose in haze over Knavesmire this morning, and I very easily saw 
 with our common glass one spot near the horizon on the left hand 
 side. I think many persons do not know how easy it is to see these 
 spots with common field glasses when the sun is in mist. I have 
 made a call at the Mount this morning. Girls have been skating on 
 the brick ponds near our garden. I have been reading [about] "The 
 Digger Movement " and . . . Gerard Winstanley. His chief activity 
 was from 1649-1652. He was a Socialist, and often used the same 
 
 * Before its functions were transferred to committees. 
 
92 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 phraseology as George Fox. But they were really very different 
 men. Gerard Winstanley's adherents, the Diggers, maintained their 
 right to dig and cultivate any of the common lands of England. 
 They began to dig on St. George's HiU in Surrey." 
 
 A little later, he read the Life of Dr. Mackennal with great 
 interest, and with a sense of much unity with Dr. Mackennal's 
 standpoint about many things. He was also pleased with an 
 article by Canon Scott Holland, The Well is Deep, in the March 
 Commonwealth. The very title appealed to him as expressive 
 of a truth, the sense of which seemed always with him. 
 
 At the end of March it seemed desirable to consult his doctor 
 again in London. The weather was warm and spring-like. 
 With his wife he was able to enjoy the hospitahty of his sister, 
 Hannah E. GiUett, also meeting some of his friends and visiting 
 his daughter at Hitchin. On Easter Sunday he attended meeting 
 for the last time, at HoUoway, and spoke with power from the 
 words — " AU things are yours, whether . . . life, or death, or 
 things present, or things to come ; all are yours ; and ye are 
 Christ's ; and Christ is God's." 
 
 In his last letter to a daughter-in-law in York, dated 3rd 
 April, 1907, he wrote — 
 
 " I think we did right in coming. . . . Auntie surrounds one 
 with care, and in the mornings when little showers of cards and 
 letters from children are brought in, I have felt unworthy to be the 
 recipient of so much thought. If I had been at home this evening I 
 should have tried to go to the Parents' Meeting. A notice was sent 
 us and we hope it may be a useful time." 
 
 That night he was seized with acute illness, and grew rapidly 
 worse. He was kept in quiet peace, his thoughts turning tenderly 
 to many whom he loved ; to a young niece on the eve of her 
 marriage, and to the home where a little grandson had arrived. 
 He was able to talk at times to one and another of his family, and 
 once again to testify that his only hope was in the mercy of God 
 in Christ Jesus. On the morning of April 13th, in perfect peace, 
 he passed away. 
 
 As we look back upon his life, the sense of a noble unity, a 
 great and single-hearted purpose and spirit, seems to grow upon 
 
MEMOIR. 93 
 
 US. He felt himself, to an extent his severest critic could not have 
 felt, that his service was attended by much weakness and imper- 
 fection. But its purpose was clear, and ever before him. 
 
 The great conception of the mission of the Church which, in 
 early manhood, had laid living hold upon his mind, guided his 
 course of action through life. 
 
 He believed that every Christian organisation exists to bear 
 witness to the truth it holds, to make this known and loved, and 
 so to take its share in winning the world for Christ. 
 
 He had seen with sorrow that his own Church was declining 
 because, as a body, it lacked the sense of a lofty mission, and the 
 enthusiasm which this inspires : because it still insisted too 
 exclusively on individual faithfulness rather than on the larger, 
 the collective faithfulness into which this must grow and merge 
 if it is to do the work it is meant to do in the service of the 
 Kingdom. 
 
 He had seen, too, that mistakes in the Friends' internal 
 organisation or " discipline " were acting most injuriously, pre- 
 venting progress and calling loudly for reform. Through his 
 first book the attention of the Society as a whole had been drawn 
 to these mistakes, and they were afterwards remedied. Dr. 
 Hodgkin writes :* — 
 
 "For the great changes that have taken place, the essay of 
 John S. Rowntree may almost be said to have given the signal ; 
 and with his deliberate wisdom and intimate knowledge of the 
 conditions of the problem before us, he bore a large share in carry- 
 ing those changes into effect." 
 
 An ominous decline in numbers was arrested, and gradually 
 the Society began to grow. 
 
 Whilst he had pleaded for the aboUtion of strangling regula- 
 tions as a first step for the welfare of his Church, he had felt even 
 more deeply its need of a quickened spirit, of an adequate sense of 
 a great heritage, and a high calling. 
 
 The desire to arouse this spirit inspired his work through life. 
 As a reformer, an Adult School teacher, an Educationist, a 
 * Journal of the Friends' Historical Society, iv. n6. 
 
94 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 member of a City Council, a Minister of the Gospel, a Quaker 
 historian, he had used all these forms of service as means to one 
 great end. 
 
 When he dealt with the records of the past, "making its dry 
 bones live " for his hearers, he brought its lessons to bear upon 
 the problems of the present, and showed how the best spirit of an 
 earlier day lives again in every movement towards a fuller freedom 
 and a truer progress now — that only by going forward can men 
 be true to their past. 
 
 And not only did he show the path of progress but it was given 
 him often, through his ministry, to quicken in others the desire 
 and will to follow it. 
 
 His work and the work of those like-minded with him has 
 not been in vain. 
 
 He had seen with joy, in a younger generation, and not only 
 in his own Church, growing evidence of that eager loyalty to a 
 human fellowship in the endeavour to fulfil a sacred mission, 
 which he had long believed to be, in the hands of Christ, one of the 
 most powerful instruments for the advancement of His kingdom. 
 To see this had been the desire of his life, and for its sake his 
 strength and influence had been freely given. 
 
 This influence was due less to any one dominant or exceptional 
 gift than to the rare combination in him of many apparently 
 opposite characteristics. The fervour of the prophet and the 
 calm wisdom of the sage ; the wide vision of the historian or the 
 statesman and the precision of the close observer of facts ; the 
 grasp of broad principles and the power of applying them in detail ; 
 deep reverence of spirit and manner combined with originality 
 and humour in illustration ; the power of rule with the power to 
 obey ; love of the past together with readiness to go forward : 
 aU these qualities were united in the character of John S. Rown- 
 tree, and all were devoted to the service of his fellow-men, which 
 was his service for Christ. 
 
A TESTIMONY OF YORKSHIRE QUARTERLY MEETING 
 OF THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS, 
 CONCERNING JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE, 
 A MINISTER, DECEASED.* 
 
 "XTTE desire to record our thankfulness to God for the value and 
 the service of a life lived amongst us which closed only on 
 the 13th of Fourth Month (1907). 
 
 John Stephenson Rowntree was in that true apostolic succes- 
 sion of which he often spoke, and which has been frequently 
 so happily known in the history of our Church. 
 
 When his father, the late Joseph Rowntree, died in 1859 
 in the fulness of his powers, it seemed as if the Society of Friends 
 had lost one who was most fitted to guide it in the time of crisis 
 which faced it in the middle of the nineteenth century. But 
 God takes His servants to Himself and carries on their work. 
 John Stephenson Rowntree, then twenty-five years of age, sharing 
 his father's concern for the future of our Society, had given 
 himself to earnest inquiry into the causes of its weakness ; and 
 the result was already before the world in Quakerism Past and 
 Present, a work remarkable for the fulness of knowledge, strong 
 common sense, and singular ripeness of judgment which it 
 revealed. For the first time it presented the peril which threat- 
 ened us as a Society, and the true way to meet it, in a form 
 which aU could understand. No one did more than our friend 
 to change the Society's policy of fear and mistrust into one of 
 larger hope and truer faith. 
 
 * When a Friend dies who, in the judgment of his Monthly Meeting, 
 has been enabled to give special service to his fellow members, a record of 
 his life is minuted. This record is forwarded to the Quarterly Meeting, and 
 frequently to the Yearly Meeting also. — [Editor]. 
 
 95 
 
96 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 For he had developed, even then, a rare power of seeing prin- 
 ciples in their right relation to one another, and in their practical 
 application in Church methods -and arrangements — a power 
 which enabled him to become a true statesman in the Kingdom 
 of Righteousness. Never misled by the fascinations of theological 
 legalism, never accepting traditional formularies unchallenged, 
 " he was always seeking the truth with his face towards the light.'* 
 Disregarding commonplaces, he proved everything for himself, 
 made sure of the true foundations of thought and belief, and 
 built with confidence thereon. 
 
 From the beginning he threw himself into the work of the 
 newly-established Adult Schools, which did so much, as he had 
 foreseen, to break down the barriers which then divided the en- 
 closed garden of a gathered Church from the world of men and 
 women outside, and to arrest that decline in numbers which 
 threatened to hurry the Society into an untimely, grave. 
 
 Again in later life he was not dismayed during the time of 
 transition which marked the close of the century. He rejoiced 
 with loving sympathy in every manifestation of earnestness 
 and consecration in the lives of the younger generation, looking 
 through and beyond novel and sometimes crude expressions of 
 religious thought, if he recognised the spirit of honest search for 
 truth, and the desire for a fresh step forward and a new baptism 
 of spiritual power. He had too strong a sense of the value to the 
 Church of the work of its younger members to do anything to 
 discourage their service . He did not waste his strength in showing 
 up defects, but welcomed the good, abstained from negatives, and 
 gave himself to setting forth positive truth. Therefore no 
 one was able to be of greater service, as a trusted link between, 
 the old and the new, promoting unity of heart amid intellectual 
 diversity. 
 
 To this great work he brought a catholicity of spirit illustrated 
 by his love for, and very extensive knowledge of the hymns 
 of every branch of the Christian Church. His power of 
 wisely interpreting the experience of the past was a guide to 
 himself and others in lajdng a firm foundation for the work of 
 
TESTIMONY OF YORKSHIRE QUARTERLY MEETING. 97 
 
 the present. To his large stores of knowledge, the fruit of wide 
 reading, was added a remarkable combination of the historical 
 mind and the progressive spirit ; and the quaint details of some 
 forgotten controversy, illumined by an understanding S3mipathy 
 and a quiet humour, were often used by him to shed a flood of 
 light on similar problems in our own day. 
 
 The whole course of John Stephenson Rown tree's active 
 life was a witness to that ideal of a lay Christianity for which 
 the Society of Friends has been called to stand. To mark off 
 certain portions of a man's daily duties, and to call them sacred 
 and to deem other parts secular, was, to him, the greatest of 
 heresies. He often quoted George Herbert's lines : — 
 
 " Teach me, my God and King, 
 
 In all things Thee to see. 
 And what I do in anything. 
 
 To do it as for Thee. 
 
 A servant with this clause 
 Makes drudgery divine. 
 Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws, 
 Makes that and th' action fine." 
 
 It was in this spirit that John Stephenson Rowntree fulfilled 
 the very varied duties of a busy life, and in every department 
 of it his large fund of information, his experience, judgment, and 
 insight, were freely placed at the service of his fellows, and his 
 great powers of observation and exactitude about details were 
 used to realise broad aims and great principles. 
 
 During his years of civic service he gave much time and 
 thought to a laborious reorganisation of the finances of his city, 
 as well as to a worthy representation of its dignity and hospitality 
 when, as Lord Mayor in 1881, he welcomed the visit of the British 
 Association. At this time also, his delight in archaeological 
 and historical research resulted in papers and addresses on the 
 antiquities of York, in which opportunity was found for telling 
 the legend of St. Christopher, and of the life-work of Paulinus 
 and John Woolman, leading up to eloquent pleas for a high ideal 
 
g8 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 of citizenship and an unselfish municipal spirit, especially in the 
 promotion of education and public health. 
 
 As regards his ever-deepening interest in the education of the 
 children of Friends, it is difficult to say whether the Society owes 
 most to the many days and hours he gave, through a long series 
 of years, to the detailed work of Committees for the training of 
 teachers and the management of the Flounders Institute and 
 the Mount and Bootham Schools, or to his exposition on so many 
 occasions of the great aims of education, which he desired " should 
 fashion character after the ideals of a spiritual, a practical, and a 
 non-sacerdotal conception of the Christian faith." 
 
 John Stephenson Rowntree's presence and words always 
 raised the tone and earnestness of the business meetings of the 
 Society. While fuUy recognising that " the Spirit alone quick- 
 eneth," he was deeply sensible of the import^t place o f right 
 human arrangements, and he would devote much time and 
 thought to the consideration of subjects likely to come before 
 the meeting, and to the work of Committees which had the 
 arrangements in charge. 
 
 But the crown of all his work, to which more and more he 
 devoted his life, and which all his knowledge and experience were 
 made to help and serve, was his vocal ministry in our meetings. 
 
 He always desired for the Church a ministry that should build 
 up and strengthen, and his own ministry was essentially one of 
 edification, besides being in a remarkable degree one of comfort. 
 And the gift divinely bestowed was faithfully cultivated, and thus 
 it grew in depth and power. It was victorious even over bodily 
 depression. He once quoted, from Wordsworth, the description 
 of the impression made on the poet when returning home at 
 dawn, by a sunrise on the mountains and the distant sea — 
 
 " My heart was full ; I made no vows, but vows 
 Were then made for me ; bond unknown to me 
 Was given, that I should be, else sinning greatly, 
 A dedicated spirit" ; 
 
 and those who heard him in our meetings felt that the secret 
 of the life of him who spoke was that he was himself a dedicated 
 
TESTIMONY OF YORKSHIRE QUARTERLY MEETING. 99 
 
 spirit. He was a workman for the Kingdom, who had trodden 
 the road of the many — ^in business, as a citizen, as a magistrate, 
 as a politician — and men hstened and were impressed because 
 he spoke of what he had himself known and proved, and so his 
 word was with power. At one time he felt it laid upon him 
 to visit all the meetings in our Quarterly Meeting, and in this 
 service he gave of his best, even to the tiniest gatherings. 
 
 There were times when, through crushing outward sorrows 
 or great physical infirmity, he entered very deeply into fellowship 
 with the sufferings of his Saviour. Like Him, he sometimes 
 found 
 
 " No way in the desert prepared for him. 
 Nor the mountains and hills made low. 
 Nor the crooked straight, nor the rough ways plain. 
 Where his pilgrim feet might go." 
 
 It may be that we ought to be most thankful for this, for it 
 is doubly-tried spirits like his who can alone be both leaders of 
 men and true comforters in times of sorest need. 
 
PART I. 
 
 THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS IN HISTORY 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF GEORGE FOX. * 
 
 pREACHING before Oxford University in 1871, the Bampton 
 Lecturer said : — " The Society of Friends has been able, 
 with the most extraordinary success, to infuse the spirit and 
 essence of George Fox's teaching into the very veins, as it were, 
 of the modem world." f 
 
 If Thomas Carlyle is to be believed, " the most remarkable 
 incident in modem history is not the Diet of Worms, still less 
 the battle of Austerlitz, Waterloo, Peterloo, or any other battle ; 
 but an incident passed carelessly over by most historians, and 
 treated with some degree of ridicule by others : namely, George 
 Fox's making to himself a suit of leather. This man, the first ' 
 of the Quakers, and by trade a shoemaker, was one of those, 
 to whom, under ruder or purer form, the Divine idea of the 
 Universe is pleased to manifest itself ; and across aU the hulls 
 of ignorance and earthly degradation, shine through in unspeak- 
 able awfulness, unspeakable beauty, on their souls." J 
 
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge says," There exist folios on the human 
 understanding and the nature of man which would have a far 
 juster claim to their high rank and celebrity, if in the whole 
 huge volume there could be found as much fulness of heart and 
 intellect as burst forth in many a simple page of George Fox."§ 
 
 In view of testimonies like these, which might be largely 
 
 multiplied, it is remarkable that George Fox's life remains but 
 
 * A Lecture delivered at the Summer Meeting of University Extension 
 Students in Oxford, August, 1894. 
 
 ■f Curteis's Dissent in Relation to the Church of England, 225. 
 J Sartor Resartus, 128. 
 § Biographia Literaria, 69. 
 
104 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 imperfectly understood, and the magnitude of his work inade- 
 quately appreciated. Macaulay* and Bancroft f are the only 
 historians of the first rank who have attempted a serious dis- 
 cussion of his life and character, and neither has been successful. 
 
 I propose concisely to recount the outline of Fox's biography, 
 relying primarily on his own Journal as my authority, and illus- 
 trating that remarkable narrative, so far as time will permit, 
 from the abundant stores of contemporary material which are at 
 our disposal. The story of a man's life, and the record of the 
 work he wrought in the world, are the true basis for determining 
 the justice of the praise, censure, or neglect with which his 
 memory has been treated. 
 
 When James I. filled the English throne, an honest weaver 
 was living in the little Leicestershire village of Drayton-in-the- 
 Clay, now Fenny Drayton, one Christopher Fox — "Righteous 
 Christer " as his neighbours called him. His like-minded wife 
 Mary, " an upright woman and accomplished above most of her 
 degree," came of a family named Lago, which cherished the 
 memory of martyred ancestors. Their son George was bom in 
 the summer of 1624. He had a brother and sister, whether 
 more we cannot say, the parish registers being defective. The 
 family owned some property, but it does not appear that the 
 children enjoyed educational advantages beyond those furnished 
 by the careful parental teaching of a Puritan home. Within 
 its grave surroundings George grew up, a pure, truthful, earnest 
 boy, with but small concernment in the sports of childhood, 
 conscientiously fearful of offending God, and solicitous to deal 
 faithfully towards men. Hence his relatives would have made 
 him a clergyman ; but the project was overruled, and he entered 
 the service of a shoemaker, who was also shepherd, grazier, and 
 wool-merchant. Here he acquired that familiarity with affairs 
 which never deserted him. 
 
 But his spirit was not at rest. He was not passing through 
 deep convictions for sin from a sense of personal guilt, like those 
 through which his contemporary, John Bunyan, travelled, and has 
 
 * Hist, of England, iii., 24-30. f Hist, of United States, iii., 16. 
 
'■vwwVrtnfM* 
 
 LIFE AND CHARACTER OF GEORGE FOX. lOg 
 
 SO vividly described in the pages of Grace Abounding. Fox 
 was thirsting for God, and sharing in that unrest which Augustine 
 has declared, in the opening sentence of his Confessions, to be 
 the lot of all hearts until they find rest in God.* He was approach- 
 ing manhood in the memorable years which preceded and im- 
 mediately followed the meeting of the Long Parliament, The 
 Scriptures, in the nervous English of the authorised version, were 
 everjnvhere in the hands of the people, now deeply stirred by 
 the flowing tide of Puritanism. Religion was the prime matter 
 of debate wherever men fore-gathered, in market, tavern, or 
 church, in the cottages of the peasantry or in the manor houses 
 of the gentry. The outcome of this religiousness was, however, 
 unsatisfying to Fox's tender spirit. He wanted to see more 
 of Christlike character as the fruit ^of'jChristian doctrine. He 
 wanted to know Christ's gospel as glad tidings to his own inner- 
 most soul, and as glad tidings to the common people around him, 
 redeeming them from the bondage and degradation of sin, and 
 easing the hard lot of the poor, the oppressed, and the ignorant. 
 A heavenly voice seemed to whisper to him — " Thou seest how 
 young people go together into vanity, and old people into the 
 earth ; thou must forsake all, both young and old, and be as a 
 stranger unto all."f So in the summer days of 1643, not long 
 after swords had been crossed at Edgehill, whilst Baxter was 
 writing The Saints' Everlasting Rest, and Jeremy Taylor 
 The Liberty of Prophesying, Fox, now in his twentieth year, 
 left his home on a quest for truth and peace. He visited Lutter- 
 worth, rich in its associations with John Wycliffe, whose spiritual 
 conceptions of Christianity were now, after a lapse of three cen- 
 turies, to find fresh expression at the hands of this young searcher 
 after truth. Here, as at Northampton, Newport Pagnell, 
 Bamet and London, Fox talked with all sorts and conditions 
 of religious professors, asking from them the way of peace for 
 which his soul was craving. He cannot have been happy in 
 
 * Tu . . Domine . . fecisti nos ad Te, et inquietum est cor nostrum 
 donee requiescat in Te. {Conf. I. i.) 
 
 t Journal (1891, 2 vol. edn.), i., 3. 
 
I06 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 the men he met with. They advised him to marry, to siag, to 
 smoke tobacco. Whether he talked to Episcopalian, Presby- 
 terian, Baptist, Ranter, or those he styles the Separate preachers, 
 their diagnosis of his spiritual trouble was inadequate ; their 
 counsel appertained too much to that which was external. Some 
 three years were occupied in these spiritual conflicts. Through- 
 out their duration. Fox was a tireless student of Scripture. 
 His knowledge was so full and accurate, it was afterwards said 
 that were the Bible to be lost, its contents might have been 
 recovered from his retentive memory.* More than 240 chapters 
 in Scripture are quoted from in the Journal, and a student of his 
 other works is said to have noted more than 400 references in all 
 from different chapters. Troubled as Fox's own mind was, he 
 wisely tried to increase the happiness of others. At Christmas 
 time he sought out poor widows on whom to bestow his bounty ; 
 and when his hmnble friends invited him to their weddings, 
 though he might be absent from the nuptial ceremony, he was 
 wont to call on the bride and bridegroom the following day, 
 and to cheer them with seasonable gifts ; for. as he says, " I had 
 wherewith both to keep myself from being chargeable to others, 
 and to administer something to the necessities of those who 
 were in need." t 
 
 After a prolonged period of mental conflict. Fox recognised 
 the dawning of Ught upon his soul. Truths of which he can 
 hardly have been entirely ignorant, but which he does not seem 
 to have appropriated as his own before the spring of 1646, then 
 assumed in his view a pregnant significance. He now realised 
 (i) that true Christian beUevers were only those who had passed 
 from death to Ufe by virtue of a spiritual birth ; (2) that it was 
 by a spiritual endowment and not by " being bred at Oxford 
 or Cambridge " that men were qualified to be ministers of Christ ; 
 and (3) that God dwelt not in temples made with hands, but in 
 human hearts. J At last he emerged from the clouds in which 
 he had been so long enveloped. I had better give his own 
 
 * Gerard Croese's History of the Quakers, 14. f Journal, i., 7. 
 
 J Journal, L, 7, 8. 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF GEORGE FOX. I07 
 
 narrative of the event. It was the crisis of his spiritual 
 history : — 
 
 " As I had forsaken the priests, so I left the separate preachers 
 also, and those called the most experienced people ; for I saw 
 there was none among them all, that could speak to my condition. 
 And when all my hopes in them and in all men were gone, so 
 that I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor could tell what 
 to do : then, O then, I heard a voice which said : ' There is one, 
 even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition.' And when 
 I heard it, my heart did leap for joy. Then the Lord did let me 
 see why there was none upon the earth that could speak 
 to my condition ; namely, that I might give Him all the glory. 
 For all are concluded under sin, and shut up in unbelief, as I 
 had been ; that Jesus Christ might have the pre-eminence, who 
 enlightens, and gives grace, and faith, and power. Thus when 
 God doth work, who shall let it ? And this I knew experi- 
 mentally. My desires after the Lord grew stronger, and zeal 
 in the pure knowledge of God and of Christ alone, without the 
 help of any man, book, or writing."* 
 
 Thus the search after peace, in which Fox had been so long 
 engrossed, had ended in his being brought to a strong personal 
 realisation of the nearness of the living Spirit of Christ to his 
 own soul, as Teacher, Guide, Ruler, and Comforter, as well as 
 Saviour and Redeemer. With the patriarch Job, he virtually 
 exclaimed, " I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear ; but 
 now mine eye seeth thee." The accidents of the heavenly 
 vision vary, but its essence is unaltered from age to age. In New 
 Testament language. Fox had come to a vivid perception that 
 " the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteous- 
 ness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost ;"f that "the 
 kingdom of God is within you{ ; " that "I" — the Christ — " am 
 with you alway."§ This was the conviction which changed 
 distress into rapture. When Fox went forth to preach, this was 
 the cardinal doctrine which differentiated his teaching from 
 
 * Journal,!., 11- 12. f Romans xiv. 17. J Luke xvii. 21. 
 
 § Matt, xxviii. zo. 
 
I08 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 that of the rehgionists around him. It may excite surprise 
 that such should have been the case, though opponents and 
 converts concur in affirming that it was so. 
 
 It was only a few years later that Milton invoked for his 
 immortal poem the aid of that 
 
 " Spirit that dost prefer 
 Before all temples th' upright heart and pure — " 
 
 yet John Bunyan seems to have been no less astonished than 
 Fox — ^who " stranged at it" — on discovering that he had 
 " been overrun with superstition " in deeming sacred buildings 
 and persons as the necessary vehicles of Divine grace, oblivious 
 of the immediate operation of the Divine Spirit on the hvmian 
 heart.* 
 
 The explanation must be sought for in the prevailing con- 
 dition of English thought in reference to religion. When the 
 Lutheran Reformation broke up the repose of Europe, it pjir- 
 tially shattered the idea that religion was the exclusive possession 
 of a vast sacerdotal corporation, from which grace was to be 
 doled out to the laity. The right of private judgment, trium- 
 phantly reasserted by Luther and his colleagues, carried with 
 it the recognition of direct responsibility to the Divine wiU as 
 manifested in the individual conscience ; but it did not dissipate 
 the ingrained idea of the possibility of performing religious acts 
 by proxy. Again, in ceasing to be the exclusive affair of priests, 
 religion did not cease to be an instrument in the hands of states- 
 men, for the furtherance of schemes of State policy. Queen 
 Elizabeth's ministers determined on the retention or abolition 
 of holy days, from considerations based on the relation of those 
 fasts to the consumption of fish, and the relation of the con- 
 sumption of fish to the supply of sailors for the navy. Then, as 
 Curteis says, hardly too strongly, "The theology of the day, 
 from the Reformation onwards, had been a mere play of logic 
 and word-fence around the profoundest subjects. The reign 
 of scholasticism had never really come to an end. Words and 
 
 * See Bunyan's Grace Abounding, quoted in F. S. Turner's The Quakers, 3. 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF GEORGE FOX. IO9 
 
 notions, not things and facts, had been hitherto the subject of 
 endless, weary, unprofitable controversy."* The man whose 
 life we are discussing cannot be rightly understood, without 
 constant reference to the environment in which he had been 
 brought up, and the condition of English religious thought in the 
 days of the Long Parliament. 
 
 The years 1647-8 were spent by George Fox in a state of 
 spiritual fervour — ^rising now and again into ecstasy — that 
 contrasted strongly with the gloom, and even the misery, which 
 had preceded them. St. Paul showed his inspired wisdom in 
 leaving untold his experiences in the seventh heaven. The 
 highest tides of spiritual life known by the human soul are 
 phenomena which the intellect is impotent to explain. It must 
 be confessed that in these years Fox describes some " openings " 
 of truth, as he phrases them, the significance of which is not 
 apparent. For a whUe it was uncertain whither this state of 
 spiritual exaltation would lead him. Wordsworth has sung of 
 that "serene and blessed mood" when, 
 
 " With, an eye made quiet by the power 
 Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, 
 We see into the life of things." 
 
 In such an hour young Fox bethought himself of practising 
 physic for the good of mankind. " The creation was opened to 
 me " ; the physicians were " out of the wisdom of God," but 
 might be reformed, f His mind was at times impelled to 
 excursions in the mystical regions explored by Jacob Behmen. 
 But it was not for long. His native sobriety of thought re- 
 asserted its dominion, and the conviction grew stronger that he 
 had a prophet's message, which it would be his life's work to 
 deliver. He laboured to bring men immediately to Christ. 
 
 When we reach the end of Fox's life, it will be the time to 
 consider whether he bore the commission of a prophet, or whether 
 he was, as Macaulay says, an enthusiast, suffering from illusions 
 after the fashion of Joanna Southcote or Ludowick Muggleton. 
 
 * Dissent, 252. t Journal, l, 28, 29. 
 
no JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTKEE. 
 
 But it may be observed here, that the office of a prophet has 
 never been wont to carry with it a total exemption from human 
 infirmity. Of the New Testament prophets, none possessed 
 stronger credentials than the Apostles Peter and Paul, but the 
 former found in the writings of his beloved brother things hard 
 to be understood, whilst the same beloved brother found in the 
 conduct of his fellow Apostle, that which called for weighty 
 censure. We may deem George Fox one of the prophets of 
 Christendom, without being required to approve all that he did, 
 or understand all that he wrote, or concur in all that he taught.* 
 He may for instance have mistaken his commission when he 
 pulled off his shoes and walked barefoot through Lichfield, 
 denouncing woe on the " bloody city." t Luther's example in 
 hurling his inkstand at the prince of the power of the air is not 
 one calling for imitation, but it does not prevent us from recog- 
 nising Luther as a prophet, and a ruler of men. 
 
 In the years which immediately succeeded the illumination 
 of Fox's spiritual horizon, the practical requirements of the 
 central doctrine he had to proclaim, in their relation to human 
 life and conduct, shaped themselves before his mental and 
 spiritual vision. An author like Macaulay finds Fox's doctrine 
 and practice novel, capricious, and inconsequential, if not 
 utterly absurd. Less prejudiced students have observed with 
 surprise that whilst not a little of his teaching was in sharper 
 antagonism with Calvinistic Puritanism than with Anglicanism, 
 he yet adopted so many Puritan usages. This has led some 
 writers to affirm that there was little or nothing novel in his 
 views, that he merely taught that which he had learnt from 
 others. The true explanation we take to be this : Fox had been 
 trained and reared in a Puritan environment. He rose up to 
 protest against so much of Puritanism as ran counter to the tenet 
 of the Inward Light, and to that whole spiritual conception of 
 Christianity which he associated with it. But just as he retained 
 the thoughts, usages, and speech of an English shepherd when 
 
 * Dissent, 253, 254. Marsden's Later Puritans, 238, 239. 
 t Journal, i., 78. 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF GEORGE FOX. Ill 
 
 he became a preacher, so he retained the thoughts, usages, and 
 doctrine of an EngUsh Puritan, except in those matters wherein 
 he definitely rejected the Puritan faith. Whilst Quakerism was 
 a protest against Puritanism, in another aspect it was its very 
 flower and crown. Whilst the early Quaker preachers were in 
 collision with the Presbyteriein and Independent clergy rather 
 than the Episcopalian, the Society of Friends became the resi- 
 duary legatee of various minor scruples entertained by their 
 Puritan antagonists. The objection to the use of t he ring in 
 marriage, the disuse of meterm^bamt^j^bedisregs^^oT^ . 
 
 eccIesiasticaPtestivals'pa^ed over to the InSds mthout chal- 
 
 . " • II •• """' • I I n i i mm m vmm 
 
 lenge. tJn the other hand the excessive observance of^tiie 
 Sabbath, satirised in Hudibras, was relinquished, as being out of 
 harmony with the universality of that grace which consecrated 
 all times and seasons. 
 
 Points of close resemblance existed between the teachings of 
 Fox and those of men who had preceded him, like Tauler, Wycliffe, 
 Colet, Erasmus, Menno Simons, John Smyth and various com- 
 panies of Baptists.* The opinions of these men were in the air, 
 so to speak ; they grouped themselves, sometimes in an accen- 
 tuated form, round one central idea, and the result, in the hands 
 of a powerful exponent, was a presentation of Christian faith 
 and practice which undoubtedly impressed both adherents and 
 opponents as being something very different from what they had 
 before known. 
 
 Before entering on the details of Fox's active life, it will be 
 well to note a little more closely that which he was going to 
 teach. An internal, spiritual kingdom involves the constant 
 presence of the King with His subjects, hence the immanence 
 of the Divine Spirit in the human heart. As the kingdom 
 is universal, so the operations of the Light of Christ are wide 
 as the family of man. That family owns one Parent — the 
 Father of spirits ; its members are brethren, sharing an equality 
 
 * See Barclay's Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the Common- 
 wealth : Tajl ack's George Fox , theFriends, an d the Early Baptis ts ; Brown's 
 Life of Bwl^gwjearlv chapters^. 
 
112 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 of spiritual rights and privileges, each invested with the obligation 
 to minister to his fellows in a reciprocity of helpful offices. In 
 modem phraseology, the Fatherhood of God and the brother- 
 hood of man was the idea which had taken possession of Fox's 
 whole nature. 
 
 In his own apprehension it had been after the failure of 
 human instrumentality that Fox himself had come into a personal, 
 soul-satisf5dng knowledge of God. Now, in turn, he longed that 
 others might be brought into the same immediate relation with 
 the Eternal, rather than mediately through priest, sacrament or 
 book. " The Father of Life drew me to his Son by His Spirit."* 
 He was to turn people to that inward Light, Spirit, and grace, 
 by which all might know their salvation and their way to God ; 
 even that Divine Spirit which would lead them into all truth, 
 and which he was assured would never deceive any. " The Lord 
 God opened to me by his invisible power that every man was 
 enlightened by the divine light of Christ ; and I saw it shine 
 through all ; and that they that believed in it came out of con- 
 Sdemnation to the light of life, and became the children of it."t 
 
 Fox's apprehension of Christianity being spiritual and ethical 
 rather than dogmatic, he was in some respects in closer affinity 
 with Colet and More J than with Luther and Calvin, with 
 St. John than with St. Paul. His teaching was character- 
 ised by the strength of absolute conviction ; it came from the 
 heart and conscience more than from the intellect. There was 
 no room in his nature for merely pious opinions : he would have 
 died for every item of his faith. He was entirely Pauline in his 
 appreciation of the Gospel as a power, moulding the heart, mind 
 and conscience. His teaching made no compromise with the 
 weaknesses of human nature ; it touched life at every point. 
 The attempt to analyse may confuse rather than elucidate, but, 
 speaking generally, it wiU be found that the influence of this 
 teaching made itself felt in three principal directions : — (i) upon 
 individual and social conduct; (2) as affecting ecclesiastical polity 
 * journal, i., 12. 
 t Journal, i., 34. { See Seebohm's Oxford Reformers. 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF GEORGE FOX. II3 
 
 and worship ; and (3) in influencing the relations of the individual 
 to the State, and to the institutions of society : e.g., war, slavery, 
 religious disabilities. 
 
 (i) Individual and social conduct. — ^The constant reference 
 of all conduct to an internal and ever-present Guide made life 
 even more intense than it had been to the Puritan. This in- 
 tensity had a tendency to narrow the range of human interests, 
 whilst it dignified the position of the individual, making him 
 independent and self-reliant, as well as prepared to honour all 
 men without distinction of earthly rank, since all were the sub- 
 jects of a heavenly illumination and a universal redemption. 
 What Macaulay says, generally, of the Puritan was eminently 
 true of Fox ; before civil and ecclesiastical dignitaries he never 
 forgot that he, like every Christian man, was " noble by right 
 of an earlier creation, a priest by the imposition of a mightier 
 hand." Such doctrine was distinctively democratic. As he 
 protested against aU ecclesiastical usages which seemed to inter- 
 fere with the virtual equality of men in presence of the Eternal, 
 so he discarded usages which marked the distinctions of rank 
 in the social scale. The wealthy were then addressed with the 
 plural pronoun, the poor with the singular. Fox impartially 
 used the singular pronouns, thee and thou, in addressing all men, 
 from the beggars he relieved on the highways, to his friend the 
 Lord Protector, or his sovereign Charles Stuart. In other 
 respects he became a grammatical reformer. Then, he adopted 
 the Baptist scruple against denominating the days of the week 
 and months of the year by names derived from heathen divinities. 
 He was constantly teaching that a building of brick or stone was 
 not a Church, but the people who worshipped in it, and in whose 
 hearts dwelt the Spirit of God. The building was a " steeple 
 house." The Scriptures were the words of God, not the word of 
 God — Christ was the Word of God. Theological terms like 
 " Trinity," not occurring in Scripture, were avoided. This 
 dominating thought of the universal obligation to entire truth- 
 fulness in speech and conduct also found expression in an un- 
 conquerable objection to every form of swearing, including 
 
114 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTEEE. 
 
 'strictly judicial oaths. The Baptists had taught the same 
 doctrine at an eariier day, but it was now elevated into a position 
 it had not before occupied. Many sufferers gave up their liberty, 
 and some their lives, rather than violate what they apprehended 
 to be the Divine prohibition of every form of swearing. In view 
 of the Divine majesty, all earthly distractions faded into insignifi- 
 cance. The uncovering of the head was reserved for the definite 
 approach of man to his Creator in prayer. Before all his feUow- 
 men Fox stood covered ; nor would he bow to them, or address 
 them in forms of speech he deemed adulatory. 
 
 His views of human life were — especially at the outset of his 
 ministry — ^narrow, and deeply coloured by the Puritan atmos- 
 phere in which he had been cradled. He deprecated the study of 
 music, the ownership of pictures, and the games of children, as 
 well as the amusements of older people.* There was little place 
 in his own natural character, or in the spirit of his early education, 
 for the festal element in hfe. He lifted up his voice and pen 
 against wakes, fairs, the tricks of mountebanks, may-poles, and 
 star-gazing, — presumably astrology. He was a sumptuary 
 reformer. He did not enjoin a uniform in dress but he testified 
 gainst its extravagances. 
 
 (2) EccH^as'tlSHT'^p^Wp and worship. Fox's sense of God's 
 majesty, holiness, love, and constant nearness to man led him 
 to protest against institutions which to him seemed to interfere 
 with the direct operations of the Holy Ghost in the hmnan heart. 
 Hence he went fiurther than any previous reformer in discarding 
 rite and ceremony in the pubUc services of religion. In view of 
 the universal priesthood of Christian believers, he saw no place 
 
 * "Q. Father, May not I follow games and pleasures, and make jests 
 and Rhimes, and go to Dancing, and Fidlers and Wakes, and Bowls, and 
 Matches at Footbal, and playing at Cudgels, and take pleasure in these 
 things ? " 
 
 " A. Nay Child, For this is a taking pleasure in the flesh ; and this is 
 that birth that persecuteth the Spirit ; and this is that which is from the 
 light, which witnesseth of Christ. . . . Now he that beUeveth in the 
 light which enlighteneth every man that cometh into the world, he comes 
 to witness the birth not born of the flesh, which taketh pleasure in the 
 Lord ; and those pleasures that do but recreate the flesh, and the birth 
 born of the flesh he denies," &c. — A Catechisme for Children, by G. F., 
 1660, p. 44. 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF GEORGE FOX II 5 
 
 for a sacerdotal order, resented its assumption to the possession 
 of exclusive spiritual functions, and in short would have obliter- 
 ated the distinction of clergy and laity. His treatment of S3nn- 
 bolic rites was in harmony with the general position just indicated. 
 Not finding the term sacraments within the covers of his Bible,* 
 he turned away from the debate between Romanist and Protestant 
 as to whether these rites were to be seven or two, and taught 
 that, without external s5nnbols, the verities shadowed forth in 
 acts called sacramental, whether two, seven, or a hundred, were 
 ^to be known spiritually by every true-hearted disciple of Christ. 
 The institution of the Christian ministry, the continuance of 
 spiritual gifts, and the need for officers in the Church, he always 
 upheld, beseeching men, and women also, to be faithful in the exer- 
 , cise of every spiritual gift bestowed upon them. He urged the 
 > words, " Freely ye have received, freely give," as an argument 
 for free Uberal service on the one hand, whilst he pleaded them on 
 the other as a reason for refusing the payment of ecclesiastical 
 charges, like tithes and church-rates. 
 
 The place he assigned to woman is noteworthy. The Roman 
 Cathohc Church had hailed the services of saintly women, some- 
 times made them abbesses in their lives, and canonised them after 
 death. The Protestant Churches had been less wise. Fox in- 
 sisted that the call to the Christian ministry had come direct to 
 daughters as to sons, on the day of Pentecost, and that this was 
 not a passing incident. Having admitted women to the ministry, 
 he also assigned them their own special place and function in 
 Church government, maintaining this position at a later period 
 of his life with great spirit and pertinacity in the face of strenuous 
 opposition from many of his own friends. 
 
 (3) The relation of the individual to the State, and to social 
 institutions; e.g., war, slavery, religious disabilities. The sense 
 of immediate accountability to God, which the doctrine of the 
 Inward Light quickened, made Fox a strenuous advocate of the 
 rights of conscience. Rendering to Csesar the things he deemed 
 to be Caesar's, he denied absolutely the right of the State to in- 
 * Catechisme for Children, I3i. 
 
Il6 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 tervene between man and his Maker, in matters of conscientious 
 belief and practice. Hence, as we shall see, religious toleration 
 became the object of a life and death struggle to George Fox 
 and his friends. Believing himself to be living under a spiritual 
 rule which removed the very roots and causes of war, he sought 
 its total abolition through the subjection of the whole human 
 family to the spiritual rule of the Prince of Peace. When the 
 institution of negro slavery presented itself as a practical prob- 
 lem to be dealt with, his faith that every man, without distinction 
 of race, was the subject of a Divine illumination, and of a universal 
 redemption, prompted him to urge emancipation as the ultimate 
 issue of domestic servitude. Similar considerations led him to 
 demand just treatment for the Red Indians of America, and 
 their instruction in the Christian faith. 
 
 In 1649 — the same year that brought Charles I. to the 
 scaffold — Fox entered upon his public ministry in the Midland 
 district of England. As an evangelist he sowed beside all 
 waters : in the open-air, at market crosses, or under venerable 
 trees, in the mansions of the great, in the cottages of the poor, 
 he was equally at home. His influence over crowds as well as over 
 individuals was remarkable. At this period of his life he often 
 spoke in the churches. The first chapter of Woodstock, pro- 
 fessedly referring to the September of 1652, has familiarised 
 Sir Walter Scott's readers with the fact that public worship as 
 conducted in the churches, 1642-1662, was widely different from 
 that which has now been familiar to Englishmen for two cen- 
 turies. Proceedings which would now constitute the offence of 
 brawling were of constant occurrence in the times of the 
 Commonwealth. Readers of his Journal will observe that Fox 
 was many times invited to speak in the churches, also that on 
 almost every occasion on which he was arrested for interfering 
 with public worship, the offence alleged against him was the 
 doctrine preached, not the act of speaking in itself. 
 
 His first imprisonment at Nottingham was not of long 
 duration. It arose out of his interruption of the preacher in the 
 course of his sermon — a, proceeding which impartial readers will 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF GEORGE FOX II7 
 
 disapprove, even accepting Fox's own version of the transaction. 
 However, he quickly made friends with the Sheriff and others in 
 authority, who recognised his evident sincerity, as well as his 
 intense earnestness. At Derby, in the winter of 1650, he was 
 committed for blasphemy, the charge being founded on the 
 words he spoke after the minister had finished. He inserts in 
 his Journal a copy of his commitment, signed by Jervase Bennet, 
 who gave Fox and his followers the nickname of " Quakers," 
 because the Justice had been bidden to tremble at the word of 
 the Lord. This imprisonment was not without its picturesque 
 incidents. The prisoner was permitted to take exercise by 
 walking unattended for a mile from the house of correction. His 
 gaoler recognised the spiritual power of the young man under 
 his charge, and became a convert. Fox was strongly urged 
 here to join the Parliamentary army and accept a captaincy, but 
 steadfastly refused; "for I lived," said he, "in the virtue of that 
 life and power that took away the occasion of aU wars."* 
 FamiUarity with the interior of a prison suggested enlightened 
 reflections upon prison discipline. He wrote very sensible letters 
 against the imposition of the death penalty for stealing cattle, 
 and small sums of money ; against keeping prisoners long untried ; 
 and against the corruption engendered by the indiscriminate 
 herding together of criminals. 
 
 At the outset of Fox's ministry, he did not desire or anticipate 
 that another denomination, a fresh ecclesiastical organisation, 
 would grow out of his labours. So far as he shaped to himself a 
 picture of the desired outcome of his ministry, it probably was 
 a national reformation in the social and religious condition of 
 the people. As years passed, and a great body of adherents was 
 drawn together, Fox's life and teaching became largely identified 
 with the progress of the new Society, f It is, therefore, the more 
 
 * Journal, i., 68. 
 
 f Although the word "Society" is used to designate those associated 
 together in worship and work at this early period, the reader should note 
 what the author has just stated, and that it was not until 1737, forty-seven 
 years after Fox's death, that there was any formal membership among 
 the Friends. — [Editor.]. 
 
Il8 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 interesting to observe in these early days how cathohc were his 
 aims as a social reformer. He tells us how he pleaded with 
 magistrates for a just administration of the law ; with publicans 
 not to sell more drink to their customers than was for their good ; 
 with traders in fairs to be honest, truthful, and to do unto others 
 as they would have others do to them ; with parents and school- 
 masters to train up children in a sober. God-fearing life. He 
 visited the statute hirings — " mops " as he calls them — to urge 
 the magistrates to fix the rate of wages fairly, to give, in short, 
 " a living wage." 
 
 We have already remarked upon a similarity of view between 
 Fox and the Oxford Reformers of 1496-15 19, in so far as both 
 apprehended Christianity on its ethical, rather than its dogmatic 
 side, and we shall have occasion later on to comment upon the 
 attitude of both towards religious toleration. The similarity of 
 their sentiments upon many social questions, as well as upon 
 minor points of custom and ritual, is very marked. This resem- 
 blance was probably quite accidental, except in so far as 
 sanctified common sense conducted to identical conclusions 
 men who by different causes had been liberated from eccles- 
 icistical and social prepossessions. Fox's mind may have been 
 influenced from the outside, in some directions, to an extent he 
 was not conscious of. He had an uncle residing in London, a 
 Mr. Pickering, a Baptist, through whom he probably made ac- 
 quaintance with some Baptist views and practices, which he 
 afterwards adopted.* The laborious author of the Religious 
 Societies of the Commonwealth has suggested, with much pro- 
 bability, ways in which mystical writers like Tauler^ JMenno-and 
 Behmen may havejnfluenced Fox.f but I am not aware of any 
 evidence that he had read Utopia, the sermons of Colet, or the 
 works of Erasmus. If he had done so, he would have discovered 
 many passages in which his' own thoughts were excellently 
 
 * Compare Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the Commonwealth, 
 Chap, ix., &c. 
 
 ■f Ibid., 124. Tallack's George Fox, the Friends, and Early Baptists, 
 chap iii., &c. 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF GEORGE FOX. II9 
 
 expressed.* For instance, the following sentence from the Utopia, 
 on the contrariety between professed Christian practice and the 
 precepts of Christ, is eminently Foxian in thought and style : — 
 " If we must let alone everything as absurd and extravagant, 
 which, by reason of the wicked lives of many, may seem uncouth, 
 we must, even among Christians, give over pressing the greatest 
 part of those things that Christ hath taught us : though He has 
 commanded us not to conceal them, but to proclaim on the 
 house-tops that which He taught in secret. The greatest parts 
 of His precepts are more disagreeing to the lives of the men of this 
 age, than any part of my discourse has been : but the preachers 
 seem to have learned that craft to which you advise me ; for 
 they, observing that the world would not wUlingly suit their lives 
 to the rules that Christ has given, have fitted His doctrine, as if it 
 had been a leaden rule, to their lives ; that so some way or other 
 they might agree with one another." | 
 
 Though Colet was Dean of Westminster, he hated and 
 denounced covetousness and simony in sacred offices with an 
 energy that has been rarely exceeded. Preaching before Con- 
 vocation, in 1512, he said, " Covetousness, this most horrible 
 plague, has so taken possession of the hearts of nearly all priests, 
 and has so darkened the eyes of their minds, that now-a-days we 
 are blind to everything, but that alone which seems to be able to 
 
 * Amongst the last words of Erasmus are these : — " Some think that 
 God is only to be found in the cloister. I think he is to be found, universal 
 as the sun, lighting the world. He is to be found in the palaces of princes, 
 and in the soldier's camp. He is to be found in the trireme of the sailor, 
 and in every pious heart. ' . . . Know then, oh ! Christian, thy true 
 dignity, not acquired by thy merit, but given thee from heaven. I am 
 speaking to thee, whether thou art a man or a woman, young or old, rich 
 or poor, noble or ignoble, a king, a peasant, or a weaver ; and I tell thee, 
 whoever thou art, if thou art born again in Christ, thou art a king ! thou 
 art a priest ! thou art a saint ! thou art the temple of the living God ! Dost 
 thou gaze in wonder at a temple of marble shining with gems and gold ? 
 Thou art a temple more precious than this ! Dost thou regard as sacred 
 the temple that bishops have consecrated ? Thou art more sacred still ! 
 Thou art not anointed only with sacerdotal oil ; thou art anointed with the 
 blood of the immaculate Lamb." ..." Each in his own Temple," 
 Erasmus goes on to say, " we must sacrifice our evil passions and our own 
 wills — offer up our lives and hearts — if we would at last be translated into 
 the heavenly temple, there to reign with Christ, to whom be glory and 
 thanksgiving for ever ! " 
 
 f Utopia, Macvean's ed., 1821, 62. 
 
120 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 bring us gain. For in these days, what else do we seek for in the 
 Church than rich benefices and promotions ? In these same 
 promotions, what else do we count upon but their fruits and 
 revenues ? We rush after them with such eagerness, that we 
 care not how many and what duties, or how great advowsons 
 we take, if only they have great revenues."* A hundred and 
 thirty-seven years later Fox writes, " The earthly spirit of the 
 priests wounded my life. . . . Oh ! the vast sums of 
 money that are gotten by the trade of selling the Scriptures 
 and by preaching, from the highest bishop to the lowest 
 priest." ■)• And in numerous other passages he liberates his soul 
 in the same strain, many wiU think with undue vehemence and 
 without sufficiently remembering that " the labourer is worthy 
 of his hire." 
 
 More and Fox were of one mind in their aversion to idleness, 
 and in their wish to abolish begging, t Colet risked the displeasure 
 of Henry VIII. through the boldness with which he denounced 
 war. More and Fox argue on almost identical lines against punish- 
 ing theft and minor offences with the capital penalty. In other 
 particulars, smaller and larger, which I have time only to cata- 
 logue, the ideal state of Utopia resembled that which Fox hoped 
 might be established in every land. More provided no lawyers 
 
 * Seebohm's Oxford Reformers, i66. 
 
 t Journal, i., 41. 
 
 % "Perhaps there was no feature in Fox's character more strongly deve- 
 loped than his strong conviction that the neglect of the poor in tiie times 
 in which he lived was a disgrace to Christendom. He laboured not only 
 in his public ministry and by the press, but he petitioned Parliament to 
 this effect: — 'Let all the poor people, blind, and lame, and cripples, be 
 provided for in this nation, that there might not be a beggar in England, 
 nor England's dominions.' He tells them that the practice of the Jews 
 and the early Christian Church ' doth condenm this nation's practice ; ' 
 where there are 'so many beggars.' He suggests that 'neither beggar, nor 
 blind people, nor fatherless, nor widows, nor cripples go a-begging up and 
 down the streets, but that a house may be provided for them, and meat,' 
 and tells them to ' mind Christ's doctrine.' ' You that are called Christians,' 
 he writes, in an address to the Protector and ParUament, ' take heed and see 
 that there be no beggars amongst you.' ' Want often brings them to steal.' 
 They that are rich should 'prevent temptation, or take them into some 
 employment, and this shows the nobility of the Christian's life.' A sug- 
 gestion was also made for a Government registration of employers requiring 
 labour, and the workmen out of employ in every market town." — ^Barclay's 
 Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the Commonwealth, $17, S 18. 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF GEORGE FOX. 121 
 
 in Utopia : the citizens of that country greeted one another 
 without bowing ; their dress changed not, as there were no 
 fashions ; the wearing of jewels was confined to children ; there 
 were no taverns ; no time was spent in hunting. The public 
 worship in More's ideal republic included a period of silence, women 
 were sometimes priests, men and women sat on different sides of 
 the church. 
 
 We left Fox in Derby gaol, where he remained about a year. 
 On his liberation he at once resumed his travels, and, according 
 to his own account, the fame of the man in leather breeches was 
 much spread abroad. As the proofs of his own influence mul- 
 tiplied, his faith in the power of any truly consecrated man or 
 woman increased. Such an one would be able to shake the 
 country for ten mUes round.* 
 
 Fox was an incessant labourer, f His missionary travels 
 at a later period extended to the Continent of Europe, to Ireland, 
 the West Indies, and the American Colonies. In Great Britain 
 almost every town and hundreds of villages were the scenes of 
 his diligent labours, preaching, arguing, and disputing with 
 opposers. His Journal obviously records but a small proportion 
 of his visits, but upwards of 1,200 can be traced through its pages. 
 
 In the course of this itinerant ministry. Fox came, in the 
 winter of 1652, to Ulverston, on the shores of Morecambe Bay. 
 Hard by stood Swarthmoor Hall, the residence of Thomas Fell 
 — Judge Fell as he was commonly called by virtue of a Welsh 
 judgeship which he held, — a successful barrister and the owner of 
 an ample estate. His wife Margaret possessed a powerfid mind, 
 her sympathies were wide and generous, her spiritual suscepti- 
 bilities keenly sensitive. She and her children hospitably enter- 
 tained Fox in the absence of the Judge, and full opportunity was 
 given him to preach, and to defend his doctrine in argument 
 against the clerical friends of the family. The Judge never joined 
 in reUgious profession with the Friends, but he used his influence 
 to protect them from their persecutors to the time of his death in 
 1658, whilst his wife and most of his household actively espoused 
 * Journal, i., 109. f Sewel's History of the Quakers (1799 edn.), i., 81. 
 
122 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 the message which Fox had brought them. His association with 
 the Swarthmoor Hall family introduced him into a wider social 
 sphere than that in which he had previously moved. No ot her 
 religious leader of equal eminence since the days of the Apostles 
 nas owed so little to scKooi or college^as did l^ox. ii we recail 
 fEe1nain^s"ortiie FatKers^ Polycarp to Jerome, or recur to 
 
 the founders of the monastic orders, to the Protestant reformers 
 in Germany, France, and Britain, or to the fathers of Methodism, 
 we observe that with hardly an exception they were men who had 
 received a good education. Fox's up-bringing had been in the 
 cottage. He had never trodden the halls of ancient universities. 
 To his self-education, to his reception of truth at first hand, he 
 owed much of his independence and originality of character. On 
 the other hand, it hadmade his outlook upon human hfe a restricted 
 one. At Swarthmoor Hall he mixed with a family, influential 
 through position and culture, as well as through natural force of 
 character. In this home, where he was so gladly welcomed, his 
 own nature broadened out, and the old hall in Fumess became, 
 for the remainder of his hfe, a head-quarters to which he could 
 resort for rest, and from which the labours of his colleagues in 
 the ministry were assisted and directed.* 
 
 No part of Great Britain received Fox's message more kindly 
 than did North Lancashire, Westmorland, and the Yorkshire 
 dales, t Largely drawn from these districts, came a band of not 
 fewer than sixty preachers, mostly young men, yeomen farmers, 
 and artisans, who joined with Fox in an active propaganda of 
 the doctrines of which he had become the apostle. Edward 
 BurroughJ and Francis HowgiU.J the latter of whom had been 
 
 * See Webb's The Fells of Swarthmoor Hall, chap, vii., &c. ; also 
 Inner Life, 268. 
 
 ■f See Journal Friends' Historical Society, v. 3-10, for an account of 
 the close connection between the Preston Patrick and Swaledale Separa- 
 tist communities and the rise of Friends. — [Editor.] 
 
 % Edward Burrough, brought up as a member of the Episcopal Church, 
 afterwards joined the Presbyterians. In 1652 he became a zealous labourer 
 among Friends, and, with Francis Howgill, was the chief instrument in deve- 
 loping the work in London. His writings fill a folio of 829 pages. On his 
 death m Newgate in 1662, at the age of twenty-eight years, George Fox 
 issued a short address to the Society, in order to calm the minds of 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF GEORGE FOX. 1 23 
 
 educated for the ministry, as also Christopher and Thomas 
 Taylor,§ proved the sincerity of their convictions by joining the 
 new Society, and sharing in the cup of suffering which its mem- 
 bers had to drink. Richard Famsworth.J James NaylerJ, and 
 WiUiam DewsburyJ were amongst the large group of Parliamen- 
 tary soldiers who renounced carnal weapons and became the 
 ambassadors of a gospel of peace. Through the labour of these 
 north country preachers the doctrine of the Inward Light was 
 accepted by thousands of persons, particularly in London, Bristol, 
 Norwich, and Colchester. 
 
 As converts multiphed, they found themselves separated 
 from their fellow men by doctrinal differences, and still more so by 
 the every-day practices and the rehgious observances resulting 
 therefrom, and they drew together by a law of spiritual af&nity. 
 Some bond of internal organisation was essential, if the new 
 community was to develop, or even hold together, in harmony 
 with its fundamental conceptions. We have seen that one of 
 these was that human life throughout its whole course should be 
 released from sacerdotalism. AH life was to be religious, but the 
 services of the priest were to be dispensed with at birth , nl^^n age7 
 and.buri^Tas'l'i'^fra'!!; in "the OOhJuct of public worship. It was 
 a remarkabletnumpaTriT^sISion, that Fox succeedeSuTerecting 
 
 Friends. Francis Howgill, a University graduate, was an Independent 
 minister at the time of George Fox's first visit to Yorkshire and West- 
 morland. He was convinced at Firbank, and spent the remainder of his 
 life in working and suffering with Friends. He died in Appleby Gaol in 
 1676. See page 198. — [Editor.] 
 
 § Thomas Taylor was educated at Oxford and had a benefice at Rich- 
 mond, Yorkshire, in which county chiefly he laboured. He underwent 
 imprisonments at Appleby, York, Lancaster, Derby, and Stafiord. Christo- 
 pher Taylor (brother) also worked in Yorkshire. Later, he kept boarding- 
 schools at Waltham Abbey and Edmonton. He died in Pennsylvania. — 
 [Editor.] 
 
 J Richard Farnsworth was convinced at Balby by George Fox in 165 1 : 
 " a man of a notable gift " (Sewel). He was present at the continuous 
 three days' meeting at Malton in 1653. James Nayler was born in Ardsley 
 parish, Wakefield, about 1616, and joined Friends in 165 1. William 
 Dewsbury was born near Pocklington. His biographer. Whiting, says : 
 " He was an extraordinary man in many ways, and I thought as exact a 
 pattern of a perfect man as ever I knew." He became the principal leader 
 of Yorkshire Quakerism. About nineteen years were spent in prison, and 
 an illness contracted there caused his death at Warwick in 1688. — [Editor]. 
 
124 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 a marriage ceremonial, religious but not sacerdotal, the validity 
 of which was recognised by the English Courts of Law so early as 
 1661. He surrounded it with safeguards for publicity, order, and 
 registration, guarding it on the one hand from the fanatical 
 violence of some of his own friends, who complained that he 
 restricted their spiritual liberty, and, on the other hand, vin- 
 dicating it against the malevolence of opponents. The same 
 efficient system of registration was applied to births and burials, 
 and is continued to the present day, though, after lasting nearly 
 two centuries, its raison d'etre was very much removed by the 
 General Registration Act of 1836. Unable to bury according 
 to their own usages in the national churchyards, the Friends ac- 
 quired burial grounds of their own, to quite a remarkable extent, 
 in this practical way obtaining a measure of religious liberty 
 in the burial of the dead, which the Burials Act of 1880 extended 
 to the national cemeteries.* 
 
 In 1656, Fox had to deplore the faU of one of his lieutenants 
 — James Nayler, who had become a fluent and eloquent preacher. 
 Spiritual pride turned his head, under the foolish adulation of 
 foolish women, who paid him divine honours, at once grotesque 
 and blasphemous. The case was taken up by Parliament with 
 incredible zeal, and ultimately a punishment of such savage 
 cruelty was inflicted upon the poor man, that it is wonderful 
 he survived it. His penitence was as sincere as his fall had been 
 grievous. His forgiveness of his tormentors was expressed in 
 words of exceptional pathos and beauty. Throughout the course 
 of this transaction. Fox's wisdom and magnanimity are strongly 
 brought out. He was amongst the first to warn Nayler of his 
 danger, but the caution was unheeded, and a storm of obloquy 
 fell upon the young Society. When Nayler's repentance was 
 manifest, his former friends received him back into their com- 
 munion. From this date, however, the student of Fox's writings 
 
 * It has been suggested that Fox was influenced in the keeping of 
 registers by his father having acted as churchwarden (Journal Friends' 
 Historical Society iii., 89) ; and that his ideas on registration and marriage 
 procedure were partly derived from his knowledge of The Directory for the 
 Public Worship of God (1649), which was supplied to every parish. — 
 [Editor.] 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF GEORGE FOX. 125 
 
 observes that he becomes more sensitive to the maintenance of 
 " the form of sound words," 
 
 " Outward letter and inward light 
 
 Keeping the balance of truth aright." 
 
 Fox records an interview with Cromwell in 1654, and another 
 four years later, just before the Protector's death. On the first 
 occasion, Colonel Hacker, apprehensive that his prisoner might be 
 concerned in plots against the Government, had sent Fox from 
 Leicestershire to London under the charge of Captain Drury. Fox 
 readily cleared himself of this suspicion in a written document, 
 as well as in a conversation with Cromwell, characteristic of the 
 two men, ending in a hospitable invitation from Oliver that he 
 should come again to his house, " for if thou and I were but an 
 hour a day together we should be nearer one to another." But 
 Fox adds that he would not eat of the Protector's bread, nor 
 drink his drink, which called forth the comment — " Now I see 
 there is a people risen and come up, that I cannot win either 
 with gifts, honours, ofl&ces or places, but all other sects and people 
 I can."* 
 
 It has frequently been stated, and correctly so, that Cromwell 
 was a friend of religious toleration. The sufferings of the Friends 
 under his rule were however very severe, f An official document 
 drawn up in the reign of James II. states that during the rule of 
 the Commonwealth and of Oliver and Richard Cromwell, 3179 
 Friends " suffered imprisonments, stockings, whippings, loss of 
 goods, and other abuses " ; whilst 79 died in prison of bad usage. 
 Macaulay's essay on Milton and the great poet's noble sonnet 
 
 * Journal, i., 210. 
 
 f " The Protector has been represented as the friend of religious liberty ; 
 and so, in some instances, he certainly showed himself ; but the Quakers 
 derived little benefit from his liberal views and regard to the rights of 
 conscience. For, though he himself did not openly disturb them on account 
 of their religious opinions and practices, yet those who acted under his 
 authority grievously persecuted them, and he gave little or no check to their 
 intolerance, although he had the power, and was repeatedly and earnestly 
 solicited to do it. The dominant parties had imbibed a spirit of hatred 
 and animosity against this people : and the Protector, it is supposed, might 
 be fearful of disobUging them, by animadverting on their oppressive mea- 
 sures : or he might consider the Quakers as too contemptible or too pacific 
 a body to fear any danger from, even under the greatest provocations." 
 (Neal's History of the Puritans, Toulmin's edn., iii. 417.) 
 
I2t> JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 on the Vaudois persecution have made Cromwell's intervention 
 on behalf of those oppressed people one of the best known 
 circumstances in his career. It is not, however, so well known 
 that at the time when he was appointing a national fast, and 
 inviting subscriptions for the aid of persecuted Continental Protes- 
 tants, a thousand Friends were languishing in the gaols of England. 
 In reply to the Protector's proclamation. Fox issued one of his 
 manifestoes, expressing the willingness of himself and his friends 
 to contribute to the national collection for the needs of the sufferers 
 in Bohemia, Poland, and Savoy, and then pertinently sajdng to 
 his countrymen, " while ye are doing this, and taking notice of 
 others' cruelty, tyranny, and persecution, turn your eyes upon 
 yourselves and see what ye are doing at home."* 
 
 Fox was a prisoner at CarUsle in 1653. Two years later he 
 was for eight months kept in Doomsdale, a dungeon in Launceston 
 gaol, so horrid that Sir James Mackintosh writes, "it surpasses all 
 imagination." t When this dreadful imprisonment had lasted 
 some time, one of his friends went to the Protector's Coiirt and, 
 obtaining an interview, offered himself, " body for body," to lie 
 in Doomsdale in his stead. J " Which of you would do as much 
 for me if I were in the same condition ? " was Cromwell's query 
 to his courtiers. Shortly afterwards Fox was Hberated. He 
 forthwith repaired to Whitehall, and dealt very plainly with Oliver, 
 directing him to the Light of Christ in his own heart, and remon- 
 strating in emphatic terms against the persecution then so hot. 
 
 Fox was wonderfully successful in infusing the spirit of sell- 
 sacrifice into the minds of his friends. He counselled them to 
 offer themselves for imprisonment on behalf of their ' suffering 
 co-religionists. In 1659, the avenues of the House of Commons 
 were thronged day after day, by 165 Friends who were petitioning 
 to be allowed to take the places of the same number of their 
 brethren, prisoners in London and Westminster.§ A fanatical 
 
 * Journal, i., 436. 
 
 t History of the Revolution in England in 1688, 159. 
 
 { Journal, L, 318. 
 
 § See The Fells of Swarthmoor Hall, 149-150. Burton's Diary iv , 
 440, etc 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF GEORGE FOX. I27 
 
 outbreak of Fifth Monarchy Men, shortly after the accession of 
 Charles II., involved the Friends in further suffering, from which 
 they had hoped the change of government might have freed them. 
 Fox himself ra this year, 1660, was detained in Lancaster Castle, 
 on a vague charge of being a disturber of the public peace. Its 
 futiUty was apparent to the Justices of the King's Bench, when, 
 to save the cost of an escort, the prisoner was sent up to London 
 on his parole, canying with him his own accusation ! In New 
 England the restoration of a Stuart king mitigated a persecution 
 more sanguinary than any the Friends had previously suffered 
 in the old country. Three men and one woman had been hung 
 on Boston common before the King's warrant in arrest of these 
 bloody proceedings reached Governor Endicott.* 
 
 The summer of 1662 is memorable ia English history for the 
 ejectment from the Church of England of the 2,000 ministers 
 who did not comply with the requirements of the Act of Uni- 
 formity. On that famous anniversary of St. Bartholomew's 
 Day, Fox was preaching in his own county of Leicestershire, 
 when he was arrested for holding meetings and refusing to take 
 the oath of allegiance. He gives a picturesque account of the 
 journey of himself and his colleagues to Leicester gaol, the men 
 " with open bibles declaring truth " as they passed through the 
 harvest fields, the women carr37ing their spinning wheels to ply 
 within the prison walls. However, they were discharged at the 
 next Sessions. The following year Fox was again in prison, nor 
 did he regain his liberty for nearly three years. The occasion 
 of his arrest in 1663 was made the scene of a fine historical painting 
 exhibited in the Royal Academy of 1864. The artist, J. Pettie, 
 R.A., introduces us to the interior of Holker HaU, by the sands of 
 Leven, where Colonel Rawlinson and the other North Lancashire 
 Justices are pressing Fox to take the oath of allegiance. He is 
 refusing, and urging as his reason the prohibition of swearing in 
 the Sermon on the Mount ; whilst Margaret Fell — ^now a widow — 
 and her maid are seated behind them. Let us pause for a moment 
 to consider the aspect of the man who forms the central figure in 
 * See Sewel, i.. 271. etc. ; Whittier's The King's Missive. 
 
128 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 the picture. His portly and well-knit frame is not yet broken by 
 imprisonment and hard usage. His eyes are strikingly bright and 
 piercing, his compressed lips and graceful features are expressive 
 of decision, benevolence, and spirituality. His hair falls long 
 behind his ears, for he resisted all the invitations of his Puritan 
 friends to crop those luxuriant locks ; he " had no pride in it, and 
 it was not of his own putting on." He possessed great physical 
 strength, much power of endurance, a loud and sonorous voice, 
 which could outdo the efforts of a hostile fiddler, or startle an 
 Assize Court with the unwonted salutation, " Peace be among 
 you." William Penn describes him as " civH beyond all forms 
 of breeding in his behaviour, very temperate, eating little and 
 sleeping less." Thomas Ellwood says, " he was graceful in 
 countenance, and manly in personage, grave in gesture, courteous 
 in conversation, instructive in discourse, free from affectation in 
 speech and carriage."* 
 
 Fox's health was permanently impaired by the hardships 
 he endured in Lancaster and Scarborough Castles in 1663-1666. 
 He was not liberated until the day preceding that on which London 
 was laid in ashes by the Great Fire. The contemporaneous im- 
 prisonment of Margaret Fell was of still longer duration and at- 
 tended with great havoc of her estate. 
 
 George Fox and Margaret Fell were married at Bristol in 
 1669. Before the wedding, the bridegroom-elect executed a deed 
 debarring himself from any rights of ownership over his wife's 
 property. In little more than a week after marriage, they separ- 
 ated for the prosecution of the religious service in which each was 
 engaged. Margaret Fox was considerably older than her husband, 
 whom she survived some years. Her testimony to his memory, 
 printed in his Journal, is a document of considerable interest. 
 
 * Gerard Croese calls Fox's person " succulent ; " Penn, " bulky." 
 " His very presence expressed a religious majesty." 
 
 The best known portrait of Fox is that painted by Chinn and engraved 
 by S. Allen. Another, differing considerably from this, in Swarthmoor 
 College, Pennsylvania, is attributed to Sir Peter Lely. Additional par- 
 ticulars respecting other portraits, real or supposed, will be found in Quaker 
 Pictures, by W. Whitten, and in the article " George Fox," in the Dictionary 
 of National Biography. 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF GEORGE FOX. 129 
 
 In 1673, Fox was again imprisoned ; this time in Worcester 
 gaol, an occasion against him having been found by tendering 
 the oath of allegiance. This, his last imprisonment, had extended 
 over fourteen months when the Court of King's Bench liberated 
 him. Though he himself was at laxge for the last sixteen years 
 of his life, the hard lot of his friends was little, if at all, mitigated 
 till after the accession of James II. From a statement put forth 
 in 1685, it appears that, on an average, orie Friend died ip prison 
 during £vggr_.moiitll-joi_QiariesJ[ I.'s reign— 321 in twenty-five 
 years,—whilst_Jhfij5Jiolejiuin of _sufferers_b3Mmyprisonment, 
 excommunication, JbanMgnent, etc., was n ot less than 12,316. 
 In two great folio volumes by Joseph Besse, a writing-master 
 of Colchester, the distressing details of this persecution can still 
 be read. Th roughout its course Fo x bore himself as a leader. 
 During thirty-six years he was haled before the magistrates six ty 
 times. _He was constantly to the front wherever the suffering 
 was hottest. 
 
 During his eight imprisonments he sustained the courage 
 and endurance of his comrades by a frequent correspondence. 
 He strenuously exhorted them to maintain their meetings 
 for Divine worship, notwithstanding all laws to the contrary, 
 notably the Conventicle Acts of 1664-70. Even when the meeting 
 houses were pulled down, the congregations met on their ruins, 
 often to be haled to prison by the soldiers. The spirit of the 
 Quaker women was as firm as that of their brethren, and was 
 shared by their children. Both at Reading and Bristol, when the 
 adtilts were all in gaol, the children maintained the meetings for 
 Divine worship, in spite of threats of floggings. The memory of 
 these times is perpetuated in the official name of the standing 
 representative committee of the Society of Friends in Great 
 Britain — " The Meeting for Sufferings." When Robert Barclay, 
 in his famous Apology for the True Christian Divinity of the People 
 called Quakers, defined the bonds of Christian Fellowship, it is 
 significant that he specifies one to be " Fellow ship in a Common 
 Suffering for the Truth.^'* f ^ 
 
 * Apology, Proposition 10, Section 3. f See next page. 
 
 10 
 
130 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 The absence of resistance on the part of the sufferers is a most 
 observable feature of this persecution. There were amongst them 
 scores of Oliver's unconquered veterans, but all thoughts of appeal 
 to physical force had disappeared. The Quaker prisoners were 
 sent unattended from one London prison to another, as Ellwood, J 
 Milton's friend, describes — so quaintly, that the reader finds 
 himself unconsciously smiling over the sad recital. But whilst 
 there was no physical resistance, it would be a great mistake 
 to suppose that this persecution was in any sense tacitly acquiesced 
 in. The exact contrary is the fact. Fox, with the help of White- 
 head,§ Latey|| and many others, was indefatigable in collecting 
 
 f In an address to the Bishops and Clergy issued from London, " 30th 
 of ist mo., called March, 1685, signed on behalf of our suffering friends," 
 by Thomas Robertson, Richard Bland, John Bowater and William Ingram ; 
 it is stated that : — 
 
 I. Between the years 1660 and 1680, there had died in prison of the 
 people called Quakers 243. 
 
 II. That then remained in prison (divers having been closely confined 
 for several years) 276. 
 
 III. The number of those that had suffered imprisonment for attending 
 their religious meetings and refusing to swear (some of them having had a 
 sentence of Praemunire passed on them) 9,437. 
 
 IV. The number excommunicated and imprisoned for not conforming 
 to the public worship, 624. 
 
 V. Sentenced for banishment, 198. 
 
 " And this instant year 1685, there were presented to King James II. 
 the account of present prisoners, 1,460. 
 
 " With account of prisoners that died since 1680, 78. 
 
 " The number of all the said sufferers come to hand, 12,316." 
 
 These figures are irrespective of 3,179 persons who suffered " Im- 
 prisonments, Stockings, Whippings, Loss of Goods and other abuses," and of 
 seventy-nine who died in prison of bad usage, " in the days of Oliver and 
 Richard Cromwell, and in the common wealtii days." 
 
 J Thomas Ellwood, the one-time secretary of Milton, transcribed 
 George Fox's Journal for the press. His autobiography is one of the most 
 interesting of Quaker lives, as well as a valuable commentary upon con- 
 temporary history. Died 1713. — [Editor.] 
 
 § George Whitehead devoted his life to public service from the age of 
 seventeen to his death when about eighty-seven years old. He did pioneer 
 work as a Gospel minister, especially in East Anglia, and was particularly 
 serviceable in approaching Parliament and the Monarchy in order to try 
 to alleviate the persecutions of Friends. — [Editor.] 
 
 II Gilbert Latey was born in Cornwall, in 1620, of yeoman stock. Busi- 
 ness duties caused him to settle in London, where he was convinced under 
 the ministry of Edward Burrongh. In his trade of a tailor he declined to 
 adorn the clothes of customers of rank with "superfluous ornaments of 
 lace, ribbons and such like trimming," in consequence of which his business 
 suffered greatly. He visited Friends during the Plague, did much work in 
 the Gospel ministry, and several times suffered imprisonment. — [Editor.] 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF GEORGE FOX. I3I 
 
 the details of the sufferings, and unwearied in remonstrance 
 against them. Whilst the prisoners refused to give sureties for 
 good behaviour, holding that they had done no wrong, they em- 
 ployed every form of legitimate influence to obtain liberation. 
 Local pubhc opinion was enlisted on their behalf, through the 
 printing press. Many curious broad-sheets of this kind may still 
 be found amongst the pamphlet literature of the seventeenth 
 century. Everyone in authority, the king, his ministers, the 
 members of parliament, judges, sheriffs, mayors, and provosts, were 
 kept informed of the sufferings of the Friends, and were appealed to 
 on their behalf. The Quaker women again and again made their 
 way to Whitehall, to plead on behalf of their husbands and sons. 
 The good offices of those who had any influence, as, for instance, 
 the honest sailor, now a Friend, who had carried Charles II. on 
 his back to the boat when he escaped to France, after the Battle 
 of Worcester, were made use of. Hostile contemporary writers, 
 like Neal, Baxter, and Burnet* do reluctant justice to the 
 unflinching heroism with which the Friends asserted their right 
 to religious toleration, throughout the reign of Charles II. 
 Between 1660 and 1689 a marked change of sentiment on this 
 subject took place in England. Hallam say^, "Persecution for 
 religious heterodoxy in all its degrees was, in the sixteenth cen- 
 tury, the principle as well as the practice of every Church. It 
 was held inconsistent with the sovereignty of a magistrate to 
 permit any religion but his own."t Nor had public opinion 
 materially altered at the time of the Restoration when, as Green 
 puts it, " Only the Independents and a few despised sects, such 
 as the Quakers, upheld the right of every man to worship God 
 according to the bidding of his own conscience." J The claim for 
 religious toleration which was but as a voice crying in the wilder- 
 ness, at the accession of Charles II., was at the accession of William 
 and Mary, with the almost unanimous assent of Parliament, 
 embodied in that very illogical, but most beneficent measure, the 
 Religious Toleration Act. What had wrought this change ? 
 
 * History of His Own Times, 184. f Literature of Europe, ii., 343. 
 J History of the English People, iii., 363. 
 
132 JOHN STEPHENSON EOWNTREE. 
 
 Across the English Channel events had moved in the opposite 
 direction, and when the sun of liberty was rising upon the Non- 
 conformity of Britciin, the revocation of the Edict of Nantes was 
 banishing Protestantism from France. It was not that the 
 plea for liberty of conscience had been first urged in the reign of 
 Charles II. This had been eloquently done by Sir Thomas More 
 when Henry VIII. was stUl a young man. But four generations 
 had passed between the publication of Utopia and that, in 1659, 
 of Milton's Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes, shewing 
 that it is not lawful for any -power on earth to compel in matters of 
 religion ; yet when this work appeared, the Friends were enduring 
 cruel persecution throughout England, and their members were 
 even being put to death in the British Colonies. Hallam attributes 
 great influence to Jeremy Taylor's Liberty of Prophesying (1647). 
 There is no necessity to decry that eloquent book, whilst we may 
 greatly doubt whether it would have accomplished that in which 
 Utopia had failed, if there had not been stronger arguments also 
 at work. These stronger arguments were the patient sufferings 
 of the English Nonconformists, foremost amongst whom were 
 the Friends. Their passive suffering was not open to the suspi- 
 cions which attached to the religious bodies from which the 
 armies of the Commonwealth had been recruited, and there is 
 ample evidence to show that these sufferings produced a powerful 
 effect on public opinion. It was because the sentiment against 
 harassing the Nonconformists was so strong that James II. was 
 so anxious to enlist it on behalf of the Roman Catholics. The 
 strength of the sympathy for their sufferings is vouched for by 
 Barclay* and Penn* and is seen in the indisposition of a man like 
 Thomas Pepys to qualify as a Justice of the Peace, because he 
 would then be required to enforce the Conventicle Act and other 
 
 * Robert Barclay, sou of "^Barclay of Ury," was the greatest scholar 
 among the early Friends, as well as a faithful and valued minister. He 
 was born in 1648, and after joining Friends wrote A Catechism and 
 Confession of Faith (1673) and An Apology for the True Christian 
 Divinity, as the same is held forth and preached by the people called in 
 scorn Quakers (published in Latin in 1676). He died in 1690. William 
 Penn greatly helped on the work, as preacher, author, and sufferer, but the 
 most important service performed by him was his " Holy Experiment " in 
 Pennsylvania (seep. 138). Born 1644. Died 1718. — [Editor.] 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF GEORGE FOX. I33 
 
 persecuting laws.* It is seen in the indisposition of juries to 
 convict, as in the trial of William Penn and William Meade f 
 for preaching in Gracechurch Street. 
 
 The adhesion of men like Penn and Barclay to the Society 
 in 1667-8 introduced new arguments into the discussions on re- 
 ligious liberty. They appealed to the teachings of history, 
 and to the fundamental principles of the British Constitution, 
 in support of their claim to worship God agreeably to their 
 conscientious convictions. William Penn's defence at the trial 
 just referred to, and Barclay's handling of the theme of religious 
 liberty in his Apology, remain noble expositions of principles, 
 now as generally accepted as they were then commonly denied. 
 But behind the scholarly arguments of Penn and Barclay was 
 the position taken up by Fox, twenty years earlier, of the su- 
 premacy of the individual Conscience. For this contention he, 
 and thousands " of whom the world was not worthy," had 
 shamefully suffered. This brings us to the difference between 
 More and Fox. The former wrote beautiful sentiments about 
 toleration, but used his judicial position in order to oppress and 
 torture those who held religious opinions differing from his own. 
 Fox, throughout his whole career, pleaded for a wide toleration, 
 and when his friends Ccune to have power in their own hands, 
 in New Jersey, Delaware and Pennsylvania, they gave a practical 
 and generous illustration of their loyalty to the principles for 
 which they had suffered. I believe the -historical student will 
 discover an overwhelming amount of evidence in support of the 
 position that the world owes an inmieasurable debt of gratitude 
 to Fox for his stand on behalf of Religious Liberty. 
 
 Whilst the cruelty with which Fox and his friends were treated 
 cannot but excite surprise, it is but just to remember that their 
 
 * See also the fines imposed on Justices for not convicting, Burnet, 184. 
 Barclay's Apology, Prop. xiv. Hepworth Dixon's Life of Penn, chap. xii. 
 
 ■f William Meade was the fellow defendant with William Penn in the 
 famous Old Bailey trial (1670), in which the jury refused to give a verdict 
 against the prisoners although condemned to be " locked up without meat, 
 drink, fire, or tobacco, for two nights," and were each fined forty marks for 
 non-compliance with the repeated demands of the Court to convict Penn 
 and Meade against the evidence. — [Editor.] 
 
134 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 words and acts were often very provocative. Quakerism in the 
 militancy of its youth was so different from the serenity of its 
 maturer years, that readers are apt to forget the existence of a 
 state of things like that mentioned by Baxter, who bitterly 
 complains of the abuse with which he was assailed by the 
 " Children of Light," standing at their house doors, as he walked 
 through the streets of London. Foremost a mongst the enemies 
 of the Frie nds were the clergy. It will probably be deemed 
 some palliation of their persecuting zeal when it is remembered 
 how vigorously Fox denounced their profession, criticised their 
 conduct and preaching, and refused to msike the payments by 
 which they lived. Persons who were at tached to the milita ry 
 and legal professions, the votaries of pleasure, the student of art, 
 fiiusic, and the djaB9«Cwg?8"''15aturally unsympaffietic, it ngt 
 "actually hostile, to the Sociefy T wEflsTp^peof eveiy station 
 in life were affronted at being deprived of the common amenities 
 of social and business intercourse. On quite the opposite side 
 of society were earnest, spiritually minded men, who were honestly 
 alarmed at the progress of views which seemed to them destructive 
 of Protestant Christianity — men like Bunyan, Alleine, Baxter, 
 Roger Williams, and the Cambridge Platonist, Henry More. 
 In the face of such a host of opponents, the hold which Fox secured 
 on the English people was very remarkable. His converts recog- 
 nised that they had obtained something of supreme value, other- 
 wise they would not have endured the sufferings in which they 
 were involved. The success which attended his labours also 
 attests the wide preparation which had been in progress for the 
 reception of his message. Amongst the serious part of the 
 population there was a longing for a more spiritual experience 
 than had been known, except by isolated individuals. The over- 
 throw of civil and religious institutions predisposed men to listen 
 to a teacher who had parted company with ecclesiastical authority, 
 to an extent they might not have done in quieter and more settled 
 times. 
 
 The multitude of sects which sprang up in the Common- 
 wealth period indicates the spiritual unrest which prevailed. 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF GEORGE FOX. I35 
 
 The sect of the Seekers represents in its name the attitude of 
 multitudes. 
 
 From the Seekers, Ranters, and Baptists Fox gathered many 
 of his converts. Whilst the existence of these bodies had no doubt 
 favoured the spread of his teaching, they introduced into the 
 new Society some of its most disintegrating elements. As early 
 as 1656 a secession occurred, of those who opposed all church 
 organisation, and thought that in the rejection of all human 
 instrumentality they exalted the offices of the Spirit. With 
 this line of thought, which some may deem the logical outcome 
 of his own premises. Fox was in acute antagonism to the close 
 of his life. One peculiarly dangerous form which this ultra- 
 mysticism assumed, was in opposing the training and Christian 
 education of children. Fox's epistles on this head are amongst 
 the most weighty which he wrote. He appealed to the family 
 instincts of humanity, to the example of birds in training their 
 young to fly, in opposition to such supra-spirituality. He urged 
 the establishment of schools for the education of girls, as well as 
 of boys, wherein the young maidens might be taught " all things 
 civil and useful in the creation." At his death he bequeathed 
 land in Philadelphia for the formation of a botanic garden, and a 
 children's playground. By progressive steps, he established a 
 system of democratic Church government, through a graduation 
 of synods — preparative, monthly, quarterly, and yearly. The 
 Yearly Meeting of 1668 may be regarded as the precursor of the 
 May Meetings of the present time, and the first of that long 
 succession of annual gatherings, when, in the words of Charles 
 Lamib, the easterly streets of the metropolis are whitened, as by 
 " troops of the Shining Ones." It is hardly possible to convey, in a 
 few sentences, an adequate idea of the severity of the opposition 
 which Fox encountered in the establishment of the internal 
 organisation of the Society. He, was called a Pope, and an inquis- 
 itor ; his epistles, Papal bulls. This opposition did not sour him. 
 Barclay, Penn, Ellwood, Whitehead and Crisp* replied, some- 
 
 • One of the most serviceable of the early Friend apostles, convinced 
 by James Parnell in 1655. Died 1692. Seep. 151,152. — [Editor.] 
 
136 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 times with great asperity as well as ability, to the accusations of 
 his opponents, whilst he held steadily on his way, and came out 
 unscathed from the trial. Before his death the opposition was 
 largely overcome, and the secession it had occasioned was very 
 much healed. The way in which Fox appeals to the testimony of 
 his life, in arguing with his dissatisfied friends, is Pauline in its 
 combination of humility with confidence. Writing from Worces- 
 ter Gaol, he said : " You have known the manner of my life the 
 best part of thirty years, since I went forth and forsook all 
 things. I sought not myself, I sought you and His glory that 
 sent me ; and when I turned you to Him that is able to save 
 you, I left you to Him. And my travels have been great in 
 hungers and colds, when there were few [Friends] for the first 
 six or seven years, that I often lay in woods and on commons in 
 the night. Many times it was a by-word that I would not come 
 into houses, and lie in their beds ; and the prisons have been 
 made my home a great part of my time, and I have been in 
 danger of my life, and in jeopardy daily. And amongst you I 
 have made myself of no reputation, to keep the truth up in 
 reputation, as you all very well know that are in the fear of God. 
 With the low I make myself low ; and with the weak and feeble 
 I was as one with them ; and condescended to all conditions ; 
 for the Lord had fitted me so to do before he sent me forth."* 
 
 In spite of this internal struggle, and the terrible persecution 
 it was enduring from without, the Society of Friends continued 
 to grow throughout the lifetime of Fox, and at his death probably 
 contained 60,000 adherents in Great Britain and Ireland, with 
 offshoots in Germany, Algiers, the West Indies, and the American 
 Colonies. 
 
 I have no time left to speak of two journeys in Germany, 
 in which Fox, associated with Penn, Barclay, and Keith, f held 
 
 * George Fox's Epistles, Tuke's edition, 153. 
 
 t George Keith was a ripe scholar, at one time working in full harmony 
 with William Penn and other prominent Friends. In Pennsylvania, how- 
 ever, he expressed views out of accord with those held by Friends, and 
 eventually conformed to the Church of England and was ordained. For 
 one year he was headmaster of what is now the " William Penn Charter 
 School " in Philadelphia. — [Editor.] 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF GEORGE FOX. I37 
 
 public meetings, and had private intercourse with the Princess 
 Elizabeth, daughter of the King of Bohemia, and other spiritually 
 minded persons, of both high and low degree. A visit to the West 
 Indies and the North American Colonies in 1671-3 was too impor- 
 tant to be passed over in entire silence. Fox was accompanied by 
 several of his colleagues ; they were on the whole well received, 
 both in Barbadoes, where a long tarriance was made, and also in 
 Maryland, Virginia, and New England. They succeeded in 
 establishing amongst Friends there the same system of Church 
 government which had been set up in England, and rectified some 
 abuses which had crept in. We note the practical character 
 of Fox's mind that in the hot climate of Barbadoes he interposes 
 strong exhortations to domestic cleanliness with counsels more 
 strictly religious. Here too, he came in contact with negro 
 slavery. He urged the planters to treat their slaves kindly, to 
 train them in the fear of God, and after certain years of servitude 
 to give them their freedom.* On the American continent many 
 meetings were held with the Red Indians. Fox's heart was much 
 drawn out in love towards these aboriginal inhabitants. He 
 strongly counselled the colonists to deal justly with them, and to 
 instruct them in Christian truth, and in the arts of peace and 
 civilisation. These humane and enlightened views respecting 
 the treatment of slaves and Indians were somewhat in advance 
 of the prevailing tone of sentiment amongst those to whom they 
 were addressed, but the seed sown germinated, and in coming 
 years brought forth great results. In Rhode Island the travellers 
 encountered Roger Williams, deservedly honoured as one of the 
 earliest champions of religious toleration in the New World ; but 
 whilst he agreed with the Friends on this point, on other doctrind 
 questions he proved a strenuous opponent, and an acrimonious 
 controversialist. New England offered no opposition to this 
 missionary visit. A marked change of feeling had come over 
 the colony since Mary Dyer and her co-martyrs were hanged on 
 Boston Common. 
 
 One result of these American travels was to impress the 
 * Journal, ii., 149. 
 
138 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 Quaker leaders with the boundless field for colonisation presented 
 by the transatlantic possessions of Great Britain. Persecution 
 was hot at home, and their eyes turned more and more wistfully 
 towards these western territories, with the desire to find there a 
 dwelling-place which might be free from the hand of the oppressor. 
 In 1674, a syndicate of Friends obtained, by purchase from Lord 
 Baltimore, a predominating influence in the colony and govern- 
 ment of West New Jersey, Its constitution was organised by 
 the Proprietors on a broad democratic basis, with full religious 
 toleration for men of every faith. The Proprietors wrote to the 
 colonists in 1677 : — " We lay a foundation for after apes to under- 
 stand th eir liberty as Christians and as men, that they may not be_ 
 Broughi into bondage, but bvj hek Qynu amsent : fo r we put the 
 power on the people. * 
 
 """"' In f eSSTTT'Ifffi^SfpEla was founded ; and that which William 
 Penn called " a holy experiment," the foundation of a State on 
 principles of religious equality and popular self-government, was 
 tested in the constitution of Pennsylvania. George Fox took the 
 deepest interest in these efforts to colonise the New World by 
 methods so much more tolerant than even those which had 
 animated the Pilgrim Fathers. It does not come within the scope 
 of this lecture to dilate upon the constitution of Pennsylvania, 
 further than to point out that whilst it was moulded by the 
 statesmanship of William Penn, it embodied those large and 
 liberal views of civil and religious liberty, which George Fox had 
 now been promulgating through the lifetime of a generation. " In 
 the early constitution of Pennsylvania," says the American author, 
 Whaton, " are to be found the distinct annunciation of every 
 great principle ; the germ, if not the development, of every valuable 
 improvement in government and legislation, which have been 
 introduced into the political systems of more modem epochs." 
 
 After his return to Europe, Fox continued to evince his interest 
 
 in the American colonists, and in the negroes and Indians around 
 
 them, by frequent correspondence. Some of his last thoughts 
 
 were with these young and struggling communities west of the 
 
 * Bancroft, ii., 613. 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF GEORGE FOX. I39 
 
 Atlantic. He can have had but httle conception of the national 
 magnitude to which the American Colonies would attain in the 
 coming centuries, nor have foreseen how much the democratic 
 framework of the United States, and the fibre of its people, would 
 be moulded by the principles of civil and religious freedom, to 
 which practical expression had been given in the settlement of 
 the Jerseys, Delaware, and Pennsylvania. The irony of history 
 has rarely been more conspicuous than when New England {eager 
 in the persecution of Friends) reared amongst her sons a poet 
 who has interpreted the mind of Fox to the millions of English- 
 speaking people, now dwelling between the Atlantic and the Pacific 
 coasts. John Woolman and Elizabeth Fry in philanthropy, 
 John Bright in social and national politics, William and Catherine 
 Booth in exalting the ministry of woman, have each reflected sides 
 of Fox's mind ; but John Greenleaf Whittier has been unique, 
 in the power with which he heis portrayed virtually the same 
 conception of Christianity — ^undogmatic, tender, practical and 
 s pirit ual — ^in association with a bufnmg Aa&ed di wroiig, ariS an 
 aU-emBfacing charity. 
 
 George Fox was a voluminous writer, but he can hardly be 
 regarded as a successful author. His Journal is by far the best 
 and most readable of his works. The greater part of it was not 
 written till some years after the events described, and it required 
 considerable editing from Thomas Ellwood, before being sent to 
 the press. Considering his intimate knowledge of the English , 
 Bible, it is surprising that Fox did not write a simpler and less 
 involved style. Macaulay's statement that it is unintelligible 
 as Hebrew is a rhetorical exaggeration, but undoubtedly his 
 didactic writings are often obscure and tedious, though not 
 unrelieved by striking sentences and by passages of exceptional 
 beauty. This is one reason why the biography we have been con- 
 sidering demands careful study. , It- does not disclose its full 
 signi ficance to the impatient or superficial student. Macaulay 
 displayed llie"'instm'cf ofa thie liistbrian when he saw that the 
 death of George Fox was an event demanding notice in any real 
 history of the English people. But when he applied his brilliant 
 
140 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 intellect to the writings of this Leicestershire shepherd, without 
 the interpreting key of spiritual sympathy, he failed to understand 
 them, or to discover the secret of their author's power ; hence he 
 was driven to try to account, through the influence of such men as 
 Penn, Barclay, and Ellwood, for that which was manifestly 
 excellent in the work of the Friends. This theory is refuted by 
 an appeal to chronology, and by the concurrent testimony of 
 friends and foes, of colleagues and opponents, both within and 
 without the Society. Whilst Fox was not so luminous a writer, 
 nor so eloquent a preacher, as several both of his early and later 
 colleagues, he had a leader's power of availing himself of the 
 intellectual and Hterary possessions of those who came under 
 the influence of his original mind, his deep spiritual experience, 
 and his impressive personality. He induced such men to search 
 out, for his guidance as a legislator, matters like the history of 
 the marriage ceremonial from the first to the seventeenth century, 
 or the idioms of modem and ancient languages in respect to the 
 use of the singular and plural pronouns. 
 
 The use made by Robert Barclay and succeeding writers of 
 arguments and illustrations drawn from non-Christian authorities, 
 in defence of the doctrine of the Inward Light, has probably 
 misled authors like Bancroft, and led them to seek for the essence 
 of Fox's teaching in philosophy rather than in the Christian 
 revelation. Men will accept or reject, in whole or in part. Fox's 
 testimony to the world, as judgment and conscience decide, 
 but it may, we believe, be confidently afiirmed as an historic 
 fact that this testimony — ^whatever affinity it may afterwards 
 have been discovered to possess with other faiths — ^primarily 
 rested upon a Christian basis only. 
 
 George Fox may be accounted happy in the circumstances 
 of his death, which occurred when he was still some years short 
 of seventy — but his repeated imprisonments had broken down 
 his iron constitution. He lived to help, by daily attendance at 
 Westminster, in furthering the passage of the Toleration Act 
 through Parliament, and to see the gaols almost emptied of 
 Noncoiiformist prisoners. The Society which he had been so 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTEft OF GEORGE FOX. I4I 
 
 largely instrumental in gathering was enjoying peace in its ex- 
 ternal relations, and in its internal economy, greater than it had 
 before known. In reality, this was not the most important 
 achievement of his life, yet measured by numerical results. Fox's 
 work was not inferior to that of the Wesleys in the next century. 
 Persecution from without, and opposition and revolt from within, 
 had been surmounted. Success had not exalted him, and oppo- 
 sition had not embittered him. His character broadened, softened 
 and mellowed, the nearer he approached the close of life. When 
 he was a young man he had said to an opponent, " We are nothing, 
 Christ is all." Now that he was an old man he wrote, " All of 
 you live and walk in Christ Jesus ; that nothing may be between 
 you and God but Christ, in whom we have salvation, life, rest, 
 and peace with God."* His last sermon was preached, January 
 nth, 1691. Soon afterwards, conscious that his earthly work 
 was finished, he bade farewell to the things of time in characteristic 
 words, indicating that his love still flowed towards his distant 
 friends, that his zeal for the prosperity of truth was unabated, and 
 that above the memory of former conflict rose the note of Chris- 
 tian triumph. " I am clear, I am fully clear." " The Seed of 
 God reigns over all, and over Death itself." -f 
 
 * Journal, ii., 504. f 'Ibib, io6: 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 MICAH'S MOTHER : 
 
 A NEGLECTED CHAPTER IN CHURCH HISTORY.* 
 
 npHE strange stories which occupy the closing chapters of the 
 Book of Judges, " when every man did that which was right 
 in his own eyes," seem very far removed from any connection 
 with the tranquil Monthly and Quarterly Meetings of Women 
 Friends. It is a singular fact, however, that the service and 
 authority of these meetings were fiercely discussed in the last 
 years of Charles II. in connection with the merits or the failings 
 of Micah's Mother. 
 
 Amongst the many books and epistles of George Fox was 
 one, published in 1676, entitled. This is an Encouragement to all 
 the Women^s Meetings in the World, in which the author marshalled 
 the worthy women of Scripture, in support of his contention on 
 behalf of the then recently established Women's Meetings amongst 
 the Friends. " And was not Micah's Mother," he asks, " a 
 virtuous woman ? Read Judges xvi. and see what she said to 
 her son ? " William Rogers, of whom we will speak presently, 
 accepted the challenge, and afifinned that the woman in question 
 was an idolater and a curser, and by no means an estimable 
 character. This position he maintained with much iteration 
 in his book. The Christian-Quaker, Distinguished from the Apostate 
 and Innovator.^ Rogers began to deal with Micah's Mother, at 
 
 * A lecture given to the York Friends' Biblical Library Association, 
 in 1892. 
 
 t The full title is : — The Christian-Quaker, Distinguished from the 
 Apostate and Innovator, in five parts. Wherein, Religious Differences 
 amongst the People termed in Derision, Quakers, are treated on. George 
 Fox, one (at least, if not the chief) Reputed Author thereof, is Detected, 
 
 143 
 
micah's mother. 
 
 143 
 
 page 62, returned to the charge at page 65, and resumed the 
 discussion in nine other places, so that, as Thomas EUwood puts 
 it, eleven times over he pleased himself with railing at Micah's 
 Mother. 
 
 In 1682, Ellwood published An Antidote against the infection 
 of William Rogers's Book;l a closely printed treatise of 234 pages, 
 five or six of which are devoted to the vindication of Micah's 
 Mother. EUwood argues that though she cursed, her curse was 
 " grave and solemn," not " wicked and profane," also that the 
 results of the curse were good, as it led her son to confess his fault, 
 and restore the money he had misappropriated. Learned writers 
 on Scripture, Tremellius and Junius, are appealed to in support 
 of this view. Ellwood further points out that the curse was 
 quickly followed by a blessing. As regards idolatry, he argues 
 that this woman, whilst not wholly exempt from the common evil 
 of her age and nation, did evidently retain considerable devotion 
 to God and zeal for his service, though she erred in her manner 
 of performing it. Ruth, Gideon, Rachel, Rahab and others who 
 enjoy Scriptural commendation are adduced as pertinent illus- 
 trations of the too frequent blending of evil with good in the same 
 characters. 
 
 When Ellwood has finished with Micah's Mother, he devotes 
 a couple of pages to the Woman of Tekoah, whom Fox had cdso 
 brought forward in support of the Women's Meetings. " What 
 an excellent sermon," said he, " did she preach to King David." 
 Rogers had rejoined that she was a " subtle woman," whom Joab 
 induced to go to King David with a lying story in her mouth. 
 Rogers harps upon the words " lying story," whilst Ellwood re- 
 
 Doctrines of Truth owned by the Children of Light (and cleared from 
 objections) are laid down, according to Holy Scriptures, and Revelation of 
 the Spirit. By William Rogers, on Behalf of himself and other Friends in 
 Truth concerned. 
 
 X An Antidote against the infection of William Rogers's Book, mis- 
 called " The Christian-Quaker, Distinguished from the Apostate and Inno- 
 vator." Whereby the Envy, Falsehood, Slander, Errors and False Doctrines 
 contained in the said Booh, being plainly laid open, the Charge of Apostacy 
 and Innovation is justly Retorted upon W. R. and his Adherents. By 
 Thomas Ellwood, 
 
144 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE, 
 
 torts that Scripture did not call her a subtle woman, but a wise 
 woman ; further, that Scripture did not say she went with a lying 
 story, and therefore, " that must be a lying story which so abused 
 both her and the Scriptures." " Whither;" asked Ellwood, " will 
 thy hot-brained fury transport thee, William, thus wickedly to 
 call a Scripture parable a Ijnng story ? " Ellwood then enlarges 
 on the merits of parables, such as those employed by Christ, 
 or those in the Old Testament, like Nathan's ewe lamb. " David," 
 said he, " we may be sure, did not take parables for lying stories, 
 when he said in Psalm xlix. 4, ' I will incline mine ear to a parable,' 
 and in Psalm cxix. 163, ' I hate and abhor lying.' " A somewhat 
 unsavoury argument follows respecting the assemblies of women 
 named in i Sam.iL. 22 ; after which Rachel, Leah, and Jephthah's 
 daughter are severally discussed, in their connection, real or 
 supposed, to the Women's Meetings. 
 
 Before closing Ellwood's Antidote, I may refer for a moment 
 to page 201, where a different subject is handled. Rogers had 
 raUed against Fox, for " the lowness of his parentage and the 
 meanness of his trade." Ellwood admits that Fox was at one 
 time a shoemaker, though his father was " an honest husband- 
 man," whilst Rogers' father was a smith, and then gravely submits 
 that " it is more reputable to make shoes for men than shoes for 
 horses." Therefore, Rogers' charge was futile. From subsequent 
 pages it appears that Fox had been criticised for not working 
 with his hands, for travelling with a man servant, and for 
 receiving extravagant entertainment at the houses of some of his 
 friends. Each of these charges is conclusively disposed of by 
 Ellwood. The biographical touches which come out in this chapter 
 are very interesting. The value of the whole discussion to us is 
 largely this — that it shows the great earnestness of controversial 
 writers, and presumably of readers also, two centuries age. I 
 hope to be able to show why these writers were so in earnest. 
 
 Fox was subjected to persistent and embittered personal at- 
 tacks from former friends, during the last twenty or thirty years 
 of his life. They were replied to with generous indignation by 
 William Penn, Thomas Ellwood, George Whitehead and others. 
 
MICAH S MOTHER. I45 
 
 There were, however, at issue, behind these personal questions, 
 far-reaching principles of Church action and of individual conduct. 
 Disquisitions on Micah's Mother, the Woman of Tekoah, and 
 George Fox's shoemaking, his travelling with a man servant, 
 and the other contemptible charges hurled at him were but the 
 froth thrown up in a storm that broke out within the Society, 
 in quite the early days of its history. 
 
 The magnitude and significance of these dissensions have 
 hardly been adequately realised, for reasons not difficult to 
 understand. They are but slightly referred to in the books which 
 are the chief sources from which we obtain our information of 
 the rise and early history of Friends. The magnanimity of 
 Fox has partly concealed the persecution to which he was sub- 
 jected by former friends and colleagues. The name of William 
 Rogers does not occur in his Journal. The excellent sketch of 
 the origin of the discipline in the Christian Discipline of the 
 Religious Society of Friends* only indirectly refers to this 
 controversy. William Penn took an active part in it, but 
 his biographers naturally give but little place to it in their narra- 
 tives. His trial for speaking in Gracechurch Street, his founding 
 of Pennsylvania, and his dealings with the Stuart kings lend 
 themselves much more readily to picturesque treatment than 
 do the details of a controversy now well nigh forgotten. The 
 Quaker historians, Sewel and Gough, devote but little space 
 to the subject. They deemed the awful persecution endured by 
 the first generation of Friends more worthy of record than these 
 internal differences. Contemporary historians often overlook 
 events whose significance only becomes apparent in the light 
 shed on them by the disclosures of time. 
 
 The late Robert Barclay probably realised more fully than 
 any previous writer — ^unless we except Samuel Tuke — the mag- 
 nitude of the questions so early debated within the pale of the 
 Society, and their influence on its subsequent history. Robert 
 Barclay's book on the Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the 
 Commonwealth is a monument of laborious research, and has 
 * 1906, ii., xi-xxiv. 
 
146 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 hardly obtained the recognition it deserves. I am indebted to it 
 for many of the materials of this lecture. Their accuracy has 
 been tested, so far as opportunity has allowed, by reference to 
 the original authorities. 
 
 Sewel's account of the Wilkinson and Story controversy, 
 during the course of which Rogers and EUwood issued the books 
 we have been quoting from, is very quaint.* 
 
 Two features in it deserve special attention — (i) That, writing 
 under date of 1683, he states that the controversy had originated 
 years before ; (2) That he should attribute so much importance 
 to the personal element in the controversy, f 
 
 In almost all great controversies personal elements mingle 
 with and often obscure the questions of principle really at stake. 
 
 Just so, when the Society of Friends was young, and when 
 Fox was assailed with abuse and criticism, or regarded with 
 esteem and veneration, behind all these personalities stood a 
 question of lasting moment : what was the true place of Church 
 government, especially in its relation to individual Hberty and 
 personal spiritual guidance ? Perhaps, indeed, we may say that 
 a question yet more fundamental was on its trial, behind that 
 of Church government : had human instrumentality any place in 
 the Kingdom of Christ ? and if so, what place ? 
 
 If the character of Fox's teaching, and the manner of people 
 from whom the ranks of the first Friends were drawn are con- 
 sidered, it can occasion no surprise that a revolt should have 
 arisen against his authority, as well as against Church order and 
 all instrumental means. He had drawn m en away from human 
 tratjitinps^ a]l(\^rec; ^d them to the teaching of jSod's Spirit m 
 their., own hearts^ Luther and Calvin had protested against the 
 
 * Sewel, ii., 399-402. 
 
 ■f Gough is as emphatic as Sewel in condemning the unworthy personal 
 motives which animated many of the dissentients and prevented their 
 reconciliation with their brethren, " looking upon it, in the prevailing 
 vanity of their minds, as a more splendid situation to be leaders of a 
 party in the wrong, than to lose their distinction by ranking again with a 
 Society, amongst whom the superior qualifications of many members in 
 capacity and virtue might involve them amongst the common mass." 
 See Gough's History, iii., xv., 9-24. 
 
micah's mother. 147 
 
 authority of the outwaxd corporation which men called The 
 Church, when its teaching ran counter to that of Holy Scripture. 
 Fox's doctrine went much beyond this. He not only rejected the 
 whole Papal system, but he rejected the aut horityof aiiypxif^'"ff 
 hum an organisation tn p rnnnnnf ^g n pnn tlip t>iiTi^ "^ ^""ili He 
 gave a position to Holy Scripture different from that assigned 
 by other Protestant teachers, and he pointed every man to the 
 Divine Light which would illuminate his own heart and conscience. 
 This was a message of glad tidings to thousands who were seeking 
 for a more soul-satisfying, inward, and spiritual faith than that in 
 which they had been nurtured. But it was only to take a few 
 steps further in the same direction wherein they had been travel- 
 ling, when those who had left the worship of the national Churches, 
 and who had discarded the services of priests and ministers, began 
 to deem all human instrumentality unnecessary for the establish- 
 ment and maintenance of the kingdom of Christ in their own 
 hearts, and in the world. 
 
 Fox's mind, on the contrary, as years passed, moved somewhat 
 in the opposite direction. His own subjection to the government 
 of Christ, his thorough grounding in Holy Scripture, the entire 
 genuineness of his religious experience, his shrewd common sense, 
 his quick perceptions, kept him from that falsehood of extremes 
 into which some of his friends fell. As the Society multiplied, 
 it became increasingly plain to him that so great an association 
 could not be kept together without regulations, and under his 
 fostering care that system of discipline grew up, which in its main 
 features exists to the present day. He saw that the New Testa- 
 ment had laid down certain laws which were of lasting and 
 universal obligation, e.g., " Let all things be done decently and in 
 order." " Let all things be done unto edifying." _SpirituaL 
 g uidance did not rngaitaaardr^ The very main tenance of spirit- 
 ual liberty was dependent upon the m '^ir^^p"''"''^ "f '^^'^"T, 
 
 It was probably inevitable, in any case, that a conflict should 
 occur between the upholders of Church government and its op- 
 ponents, but the materials from which the Society of Friends had 
 been recruited intensified the danger. Amongst the multitude 
 
148 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 of sects that prevailed in the time of the Commonwealth, Ranters 
 and Seekers were prominent. They had originated at an earlier 
 period. Their views were ultra-mystical. Put shortly, their 
 tenets encouraged a quest for spiritual-mindedness in the denial 
 of all, or nearly aU religious institutions. Ordinances, congre- 
 gational worship, helpful Christian association. Scripture reading. 
 Christian oificers, even common morality, were sometimes sacri- 
 ficed on the altar of ultra-spirituality. Oliver Cromwell said 
 that next to the sect of the Finders was that of the Seekers, but 
 his benediction was intended for sober-minded inquirers, not for 
 fanatics — a word which entered the language during the time of 
 the Civil War. Many of the Ranters and Seekers did become 
 finders, and useful members of the community, under the ministry 
 of the early Friends. But some leaven of their former doctrines 
 came with them, and Penn, Fox, and other contemporary writers 
 frequently intimate that the source of the discord in the Society 
 was to be found here. Opposition to Church order and govern- 
 ment, and indeed to the place of human agency in the things of 
 God, showed itself very early, and was continually reasserting itself 
 in one form or another. 
 
 It was in 1647, two years before the execution of Charles I., 
 that Fox began his ministry. In his own words, the Father of his 
 Life had drawn him to His Son by His Spirit ; and he went forth 
 to tell of that which had become precious to his own soul. He 
 was not long before he found those who shared his convictions, 
 and accepted his conception of the essentially spiritual character 
 of the kingdom of Christ. When such persons lived near to each 
 other, and began to meet for religious worship, they formed from 
 the very law of their union a Christian family or a little Church.* 
 As numbers increased, those mutual helps and guards which had 
 been almost spontaneously afforded were found to require some 
 regular arrangement for the preservation of order. The regis- 
 tration of Births, Marriages, and Deaths was systematically 
 begun in some localities as early as 1630. In 1653, the same year 
 in which Oliver Cromwell became Lord Protector, the lines of the 
 * See Christian Discipline, vol. ii., p. xiii. 
 
micah's mother. 149 
 
 Friends' marriage procedure were laid down, and some of their 
 Church meetings were settled. In 1654 the Society was establish- 
 ing itself in London. Upwards of sixty ministers, mostly young 
 men under forty years of age, many of whom were from the North 
 of England, were now preaching. The doctrine they set forth 
 was largely accepted by the people. Great persecution attended 
 the infant Society, and in 1656 the fall of James Nayler exposed 
 it to much odium. Disciplinary meetings ia London under various 
 names and Quarterly Meetings in the country were established in 
 the course of succeeding years, and many General and Yearly 
 Meetings were held in various places. The same year that saw 
 London in ashes from the great fire witnessed the foundation of 
 both Men's and Women's Monthly Meetings ; and their multi- 
 plication was vigorously pressed on in subsequent years. The 
 marriage procedure was somewhat modified and made more 
 systematic. The early educational efforts of the Friends date 
 from the same period. In 1673 the first Yearly Meeting of a 
 representative character was held in London. Points of order, 
 such as the rising of the congregation during public prayer and 
 the uncovering of the head, had been discussed and decided. 
 A simple but efficient machinery had been provided for the 
 distribution of the ministry, and large collections had been made 
 for the support of those engaged in it at home and abroad. The 
 Morning Meeting* is a mUd survival of the London Home Mission 
 work of the seventeenth century. It is never to be forgotten 
 that this building up of the Society went on during a time of 
 terrible persecution, when the prisons of England were crowded 
 with Friends. Their losses of property were enormous ; the 
 prisoners who died were counted by hundreds, f The Meeting 
 for Sufferings, founded 1675, perpetuates in its historic name the 
 memory of these times. The trial of William Penn and William 
 Meade occurred in 1670. Twelve years later Penn founded 
 the city of Philadelphia, and a great emigration of Friends to 
 
 * The Morning Meeting was given up in 1901, its functions being 
 then transferred to the Meeting for Sufferings. — [Editor.] 
 
 t See p. 130M. 
 
150 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 Pennsylvania followed. The accession of James II. brought some 
 abatement of suffering, and the passing of the Toleration Act in 
 1689 was followed by a blessed relief from persecution, which had 
 spared neither rich nor poor, old nor young, male nor female. 
 This event virtually closed the first chapter of the Society's his- 
 tory. The death of George Fox occurred in the succeeding year. 
 
 It was a wonderful proof of legislative constructive power, 
 as well of the general sound-mindedness of the community, 
 that in spite of violent external persecution, and of strenuous 
 opposition from within, the fabric of the Society should have 
 been so firmly established. Our admiration grows, as we consider 
 the persistent opposition which Fox and his colleagues sustained 
 in the progress of their work. It is to this opposition that we will 
 now direct our attention. 
 
 Within seven years from the beginning of Fox's ministry 
 some of his friends began to compare his influence with that of the 
 Pope. Gospel ministry was criticised, even the powerful preach- 
 ing of Francis Howgill. Certain of Fox's feUow ministers were 
 compared to Lord Bishops. He, himself, was censured for ar- 
 ranging for the distribution of the ministry, and for allowing 
 pulpits — ^presumably ministers' galleries — in the meeting houses. 
 
 About ten years later, John Perrot, who, though apparently 
 somewhat crazy, must have been a man of some influence, 
 headed a party in opposition to Fox's directions that in pubhc 
 prayer the speaker should uncover his head and the congregation 
 should stand or kneel. Perrot argued that men should not un- 
 cover their heads unless they had a " motion " to do so at the 
 time ; also that they might rightly have motions to take off their 
 shoes rather than their hats, and fall upon their faces. Thomas 
 EUwood was one of those who at the first were carried away by 
 an appearance of spirituality in this teaching. He was not long 
 before he saw reason to change his mind, and made a public 
 acknowledgment that he had been in error. Perrot emigrated to 
 America and ultimately died a persecutor. The dissemination of 
 his views decimated the congregations of Friends in Virginia and 
 Barbadoes. 
 
micah's mother. 151 
 
 In a number of the early London meeting books are regulations 
 — 19 in number — called George Fox's Canons and Institutions 
 by his detractors, and supposed to have been framed about 1668. 
 The seventh clause runs as foUows — " And all such as wears 
 their hats when Friends prays, and are gotten into the old rotten 
 principle of the Ranters who set up the wearing thereof in oppo- 
 sition to the power of God, and therein upholds it which is 
 condemned by it, and the power of God is gone over it, and them 
 who are ranted from the truth, and have stopped many who were 
 coming into it (that the very world can say you are in confusion 
 and divided, and gone from your first principle, who said you were 
 of one heart, and one mind, and one soul) ; and, therefore, that spirit 
 must be cut off by the sword of the Spirit of the Lord, that they 
 may come to that which did at first convince them ; and notice 
 must be given to the General Meeting of all these things, and 
 from thence some must be ordered to go to exhort them that be 
 in such things to come to the first principle that did at first con- 
 vince them, that they may come over such things, and Friends 
 must stand up in the noble seed of God to judge the world and 
 all the fallen angels."* 
 
 It was early in the reign of Charles II., that WUliam Salt, 
 
 a S5anpathiser with John Perrot, issued a pamphletf in opposition 
 
 to the vigorous evangelistic activity of the first band of preachers. 
 
 This was based on the plea of high spirituality. The same 
 
 doctrine was made to do duty in support of a less active assertion 
 
 of the right of public worship, in view of the suffering which that 
 
 assertion entailed. Indeed, the duty of public worship as a 
 
 regular habit was impugned. Friends were only to go to meetings, 
 
 it was said, " when they felt the stirrings of life, both with respect 
 
 to time and place." A few years later Stephen Crisp wrote an 
 
 epistle, to Friends, " Against such as cry out against the form 
 
 of Godliness as against meeting at set times, on First days." In 
 
 this letter, which is written in a very loving strain, the writer says, 
 
 " Lend not your ears, I beseech you, into that in any or in your- 
 
 * Beck and Ball's London Friends' Meetings, 49. 
 ■f Some Breathings of Life from a Naked Heart. 
 
152 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 selves that would, under pretence of formality in times and places, 
 draw you aside from the good and blessed testimony of assembling 
 yourselves together, to wait upon your God." Stephen Crisp — a 
 wise and able minister — also tells us how he had to struggle 
 against the same spirit amongst Friends in Holland. " I laboured 
 greatly," he says, " to inform the minds of Friends of the depths 
 of that ranting spirit, and whither it would lead, and where it 
 would centre ; having had long experience of it here in England."* 
 
 In 1673, a curious pamphlet entitled. The Spirit of the Hat ; or 
 the Government of the Quakers among Themselves, as it hath been 
 Exercised of late years by George Fox, and other Leading Men in their 
 Monday, or Second-dayes Meeting, shows that the controversy 
 started by Perrot respecting the usages in public prayer was not 
 entirely ended. Fox's directions in respect to those usages 
 are treated as having been the beginning of a formal worship. 
 The writer proceeds to argue for the independence of each con- 
 gregation. This was in opposition to the policy of welding the 
 Society together through the Monthly and Quarterly Meetings. 
 William Penn replied in a powerful rejoinder entitled. The Spirit of 
 Alexander the Coppersmith lately revived.] 
 
 Some of the dissentient Friends carried their opposition to 
 common usages to the extent of declining regularly to shake 
 hands with their acquaintances, lest thereby they should sanction 
 a formal habit. Fox found it needful to encourage all cordially 
 to shake hands with one another. % The incident is very curious, 
 and suggestively illustrates the repeated apostolic exhortation 
 to " greet with an holy kiss." 
 
 The lawfulness or unlawfulness of congregational singing 
 was another item in frequent debate amongst the Friends of the 
 seventeenth century. Some of the dissentients obj ected to singing 
 in toto. The attitude of Fox, Barclay, and the main body of the 
 
 * Samuel Tuke's Memoirs of Stephen Crisp, 153. 
 
 ■f See also his Judas and the Jews, and George Whitehead's The Apostate 
 Incendiary Rebuked, 1673. Wilham Mucklow, part author of The Spirit of 
 the Hat, was afterwards reconciled to his brethren. He died 1713, aged 
 eighty-two. 
 
 t Inner Life, 440. 
 
MICAH S MOTHER. I53 
 
 Society was that it stood on the same footing as vocaJ ministry 
 and vocal prayer in meetings for worship — ^not forbidden, but not 
 pre-arranged for. As early as 1653, Fox wrote to Robert Ariss,* 
 " Why should not they that sing have liberty of conscience to 
 sing in your meetings ? I do look upon thee as a competent 
 judge whether they sing in grace or not." In the same year 
 Fox tells us how his own singing in Carlisle prison drowned the 
 noise of the fiddler whom the jailor had brought to annoy him. 
 In 1662, the trustee of the meeting house at Reading, who be- 
 longed to the Story and Wilkinson party, said that " singing or 
 speaking singingly in prayer, preaching, or with a vocal voice, 
 was an abomination."! On the other hand, William Rogers 
 says he was falsely accused of comparing the singing of Friends 
 to " catterwouling " and " the belching of a calf." He says 
 it was the faith of himself and his friends, John WUkinson and 
 John Story, that " as groanings, sighing, soundings and singings 
 may proceed from deceitful spirits, so also we declare groanings, 
 soundings, and singings may be the fruit of the Spirit of the Lord 
 amongst God's people." J 
 
 In one of the pamphlets against the party of J. W. and J. S. 
 it was complained : " That they had disorderly and irreverently 
 judged Friends' tender exercise in breaking forth in melodious 
 singings and soundings to God's praise in their meetings, imder 
 the exercise of the power which breaks and fUls the heart, out of 
 the abundance whereof breaks forth sighs, and groans, and spiritual 
 songs, as the Lord is pleased to exercise them that waits upon him." 
 But John Wilkinson affirmed — " Neither did I ever deny any 
 singings, soundings, breathings that had their rise from the Spirit 
 of God." 
 
 In Robert Baxday's Truth Clear' d of Calumnies (1670), he says 
 that singing of Psalms is a part of God's worship, when performed 
 in His will and by His Spirit, and is warrantably performed amongst 
 
 * Probably G. Fox's correspondent was Robert Arch, a Separatist. — 
 [Editor.] 
 
 f Inner Life, 462. 
 
 J Christian Quaker, iv., 39. 
 
154 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 the saints, is a thing denied by no Quaker so-called, and it is not 
 unusual among them. And at times David's words may also 
 be used as the Spirit leads thereunto, and as they suit the con- 
 ditions of the party, is acknowledged without dispute.* 
 
 The subject came definitely before the Yearly Meeting of 
 1675, which issued an epistle "concerning sighing, groaning, 
 and singing in the church." " It hath been, and is, our living 
 sense and constant testimony, according to our experience, of the 
 divers operations of the Spirit and power of God in His church, 
 that there has been and is serious sighing, sensible groaning, and 
 reverent singing, breathing forth a heavenly sound of joy, with 
 grace, with the Spirit, and with the understanding," " which is 
 not to be quenched or discouraged in any," "unless im- 
 moderate." t 
 
 Perhaps the most mischievous form which the Ranter spirit 
 assumed was in opposition to education, and in promoting a 
 neglect of Scriptural and religious teaching of children. I propose 
 to do little more than name the subject here, because I have no 
 time to do justice to it, and also because it was handled in so 
 masterly a way by Samuel Tuke. J The home education of chil- 
 dren called forth some of Fox's best epistles. His pamphlet 
 to the Women's Meetings, which we mentioned at the opening 
 of this Tecture, and which Rogers made such sport of, is really a 
 very sensible production, the general drift of the argument being 
 that from the earliest times women had had an important share 
 in the service of the Church. In connection with Eli's example 
 in not restraining his sons, a passage on maternal influence is 
 interesting : 
 
 " So many of you may admonish your Children, but if ye 
 do not restrain them with the Spirit of God, which God hath 
 given to you, you will quench the Spirit of God in you, by in- 
 
 * This passage gives in abbreviated form the sense of Barclay's 
 argument on pp. 29-30 of the pamphlet quoted from. — [Editor.] 
 
 f Inner Life, 461. See also An Inquiry into the Lawfulness and 
 Expediency of Singing in Christian Worship. (Darlington, 1883.) 
 
 } Five Papers on the Past Experience and Proceedings of the Society of 
 Friends in connection with the Education of Youth. (1843.) 
 
MICAH S MOTHER. 155 
 
 dtilging them ; so by that you will loose your spiritual Offering 
 and your priesthood therein ; and take heed if you do not loose 
 your own Lives, and your Children's also ; therefore mind old 
 Ely for your example."* 
 
 The discontented elements in the Society drew together, 
 under the leadership of John Wilkinson and John Story, as the 
 Monthly Meetings became more firmly established throughout 
 the country. These men had been colleagues of Fox's in the min- 
 istry since 1654. They were subsequently joined by William 
 Rogers, of Bristol, a wealthy merchant, possessing considerable 
 influence and some learning. The dissatisfied party became 
 powerful in Westmorland and the West of England. The dissen- 
 tients upheld the power of the congregation as against that of the 
 association of Monthly and Quarterly Meetings. They exhibited 
 great jealousy of the influence of the travelling ministers, objecting 
 to their presence in the meetings for discipline. They showed an 
 excessive dislike to the Women's Meetings, and most of all to 
 the Women's Meetings having any share in the proceedings 
 respecting marriages. They made a great point that George Fox 
 and Margaret Fell did not present their intended marriage to the 
 Women's Monthly Meeting at Bristol, although it existed at the 
 time. The short answer to their objections was that some grave 
 disorders in connection with the Friends' marriage procedure, 
 disagreeable instances of which are given in the pamphlets of the 
 time, had disclosed the necessity of safeguarding that procedure 
 with additional precautions. It is not easy to convey to those 
 who have not read the literature of this controversy an adequate 
 idea of the antipathy exhibited against the Women's Meetings. 
 Some of the men seem to have felt themselves degraded by any 
 of their affairs being subject to the Church meetings of the sisters. 
 Their spirit was like that of John Knox when he inveighed against 
 " the monstrous Regimen of Women." They found a novel 
 interpretation and application of Isa. iii. 12, in the then state of 
 the Society : — " As for my people, children are their oppressors, 
 and women rule over them." 
 
 * Encouragement to Women's Meetings, 23. 
 
156 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 The opposition to Church authority assumed a variety of 
 shapes in different locahties. In York, the congregation of 
 Friends was rent in twain, from the offence given by a communi- 
 cation from the Quarterly Meeting, counselling deliberation and 
 decorum in respect to second marriages. It is difficult to under- 
 stand how so judicious an exhortation could have caused a schism. 
 
 Altogether, in the course of the Wilkinson and Story con- 
 troversy, not fewer than one hundred pamphlets and tracts were 
 issued from the press, a marvellous proof of the energy and zeal 
 thrown into the discussion. Perhaps the ablest of these was 
 Robert Barclay's work, with this long title page : — " The Anarchy 
 of the Ranters and other Libertines, the Hierarchy of the Roman- 
 ists, and other Pretended Churches, equally Refused and Refuted 
 in a Two-fold APOLOGY for the Church and People of God, caUed 
 in Derision QUAKERS. Wherein, They are vindicated from those 
 that accuse them of Disorder and Confusion on the one hand, and 
 from such as calumniate them with Tyrarmy and Imposition on 
 the other : shewing, that as the True and Pure Principles of the 
 Gospel are restored by their Testimony, so is also the ancient 
 apostolick Order of the Church of Christ re-established among 
 them, and settled upon its Right Basis and Foundation." 
 
 In this work the principles of Church association are laid down 
 with the perspicuity and learning to be expected from the author 
 of the Apology. 
 
 A sore point with the dissentient Friends was their objection 
 to the extent to which the Monthly Meetings entered into 
 the details of individual life, deciding, for instance, on differences 
 amongst Friends, instead of allowing them to go to the Courts of 
 Law. In this connection there is a very curious passage in the 
 Anarchy, in which Robert Barclay seems to have had a vision, 
 hitherto very imperfectly fulfilled, of the world being eased of 
 lawyers as well as priests, through the good offices of the Friends 
 in their Church meetings. He says, " As Truth and Righteousness 
 prevails in the earth, by our faithful witnessing and keeping to it, 
 the nations shall come to be eased and disburdened of that 
 deceitful tribe of Lawyers, (as weU as Priests), who by their 
 
micah's mother. 157 
 
 many tricks and endless intricacies have rendered justice in their 
 method burdensome to honest men, and seek not so much to 
 put an end, as to foment controversies and contentions, that they 
 themselves might be still fed and upheld, and their trade kept up. 
 Whereas by truth's propagation as many of these controversies 
 will die by men's coming to be less contentious ; so when any 
 difference ariseth, the saints giving judgment without gift or 
 reward, or running into the tricks and endless labyrinths of the 
 lawyers, will soon compose them. And this is that we are per- 
 suaded the Lord is bringing about in our day, though many do 
 not, and wiU not see it. . . Even now are there thousands, 
 that can set to their seal, that he hath now again the second 
 time appeared, and . . he is restoring the golden age, and 
 bringing them into the holy order and government of his own Son, 
 who is ruling and is to rule in the midst of them, setting forth the 
 Counsellors as at the beginning, and Judges as at first ; and es- 
 tablishing Truth, Mercy, Righteousness, and Judgment again in 
 the Earth : Amen, Hallelujah."* 
 
 The only further remark that time will permit me to make 
 respecting this able treatise is that, whilst the author argues 
 so strongly in favour of the authority of the disciplinary meetings 
 of Friends, he is equally emphatic that their authority is moral 
 and spiritual, and he draws a clear distinction between them and 
 the s5mods of Churches which invoke the aid of the State to carry 
 out their decrees. In spite of this disclaimer, Robert Barclay 
 incurred much censure from the dissentients. They hinted that 
 he might be a Papist in disguise. In fact they often called their 
 opponents the Papistical party, and Fox's epistles were compared 
 to the bulls of Leo X. 
 
 Another member of the first band of preachers, who afterwards 
 put himself in opposition to Fox, was John Harwood. One 
 ground of his opposition was the arrangements made for the dis- 
 tribution of the ministry. There is reason for believing that 
 from a very early date the north country preachers were con- 
 siderably directed in their movements from Swarthmoor Hall, 
 * Barclay's Works, 209, 210. 
 
158 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 and that they did not travel over England without plan or sjrstem. 
 At any rate, when there came to be many preachers in London, 
 Bristol, and elsewhere, some arrangements were evidently 
 necessary, so that, in Fox's own words, " the ministers 
 might not go in heaps " to one meeting and leave others unpro- 
 vided for. Harwood,* in 1663, complains that the preachers were 
 too much ordered about — " Thou must go to such a place," " Such 
 a place is ordered for thee." He had been a prisoner in York Castle 
 but was now apparently a dissatisfied man. His paper is interest- 
 ing as showing the early existence of some machinery for the 
 suitable distribution of the ministry. As the Friends multiplied 
 the arrangements were made more complete, f 
 
 In the minutes of the London Morning or Ministers' Meeting, 
 17, iii., 1675, " It is desired that all Friends in and about the 
 city that have a public testimony for God, or ministry, do 
 meet with the brethren on every First day and Second day 
 morning when they csm. Otherwise, to send a note to the 
 meetings signifying what meetings they intend to be at on the 
 First days." The Monday Morning Meeting dealt with future 
 arrangements, and the meeting again of the ministers on the 
 Sunday morning at eight o'clock was to complete the plan. 
 They then dispersed, the horses standing in readiness in the 
 yard for those who visited the more distant meetings. 
 
 " The plan or arrangement books, for the ' orderly dispersion ' 
 of the ministers for London and the environs, still exist from 1697 
 with the signatures of those ministers who engaged to be present, as 
 do those for Bristol and the surrounding meetings. It can be shown 
 from these books, that the system was so complete that two ministers 
 were thus provided for every meeting. The books show that, to 
 every one of these meetings, morning and afternoon, Sunday and week- 
 days, a smaller number than two ministers in prescribed attendance 
 were seldom present, while every marriage and funeral was attended 
 by one."{ 
 
 * The True and Real Demonstration why I deny the Authority of George 
 Fox (1663). Fox's reply was entitled, The Spirit of Envy, Lying and 
 Persecution, etc. See Inner Life, 382. 
 
 t See Chapter VI. 
 
 X Inner Life, 384. See Beck and Ball's London Meetings, 339 ; Tanner's 
 Lectures on Friends in Somersetshire, 95. 
 
micah's mother. 159 
 
 Much more, however, than the distribution of the ministry 
 was questioned. The very existence and service of the Christian 
 ministry was impugned. If not entirely set aside, it was dis- 
 paraged as a superfluous institution for a people who had come 
 to Uve under the teaching of God's Spirit. Reference has already 
 been made to the indications of a tendency to disparage the 
 ministry of Francis Howgill and his colleagues, so early as 1654. 
 In the same year it is observable how clearly Richard Famsworth 
 wrote, in reference to the place of the Christian ministry : '"He 
 that is a Bishop, Pastor, or Teacher, and is taught by the Spirit, 
 who is not of man but of God, and is blameless and doth contend 
 for the faith once delivered to the saints, who are not carnal 
 but spiritual, and are governed by the Spirit of God, such do 
 we own.' "* About the same time we have an account of John 
 Pendarves, a Baptist minister, who asked of Friends, evidently 
 with a desire for information, " whether they considered in- 
 strumental teaching to be unsuitable to the new covenant " ; and 
 was replied to, " that the Friends did not deny ' instrumental ' 
 teaching, but ' traditional ' teaching." 
 
 In 1666, there was so much opposition to ministers and to 
 all Church officers, that an epistle was issued from a munber 
 of Friends in London, against " those who speak evil of dignities, 
 and despise governments," and "under the pretence of keeping 
 down forms and man, cry down the ministry and meetings." t 
 In 1677, a somewhat similar letter was issued, signed by sixty- 
 seven Friends, and dated from Ellis Hookes, "his chamber in 
 London." In fact, a continued line of sentiment more or less 
 hostile to the ministry may be traced in the Society from the 
 time of the Commonwealth to the death of Fox. 
 
 In connection with this subject, Penn's careful definition of 
 terms is observable in his Brief Examination and State of Liberty 
 Spiritual : — 
 
 " Q. What is Spiritual Liberty ? 
 
 A. It is twofold : there is a true and false liberty, as a true and 
 false spirit, the right discerning of which concerns everyone's eternal 
 weU-being. 
 
 * Inner Life, 434. t 'H-^^^, 433- 
 
l6o JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 Q. What is true Spiritual Liberty ? 
 
 A . Deliverance from sin by the Perfect Law in the heart, the 
 Perfect Law of Liberty [James ii.], otherwise called. The Law of the 
 Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus, that makes free from the Law of Sin and 
 Death ; elsewhere styled, The Law of Truth writ in the Heart which 
 makes free indeed, as saith Christ, if the Truth make you free, then 
 you are free indeed. So that the Liberty of God's people stands in 
 the truth, and their communion in it, and in the Perfect Spiritual 
 Law of Christ Jesus, which delivers and preserves them from every 
 evil thing that doth or would embondage. In this blessed Liberty, 
 it is not the will nor Wisdom of man, neither the vain affections and 
 lusts, that rule or give law to the soul ; for the minds of all such as 
 are made free by the Truth, are by the Truth conducted in doing and 
 suffering through their Earthly Pilgrimage. 
 
 Q. What is False Liberty ? 
 
 A . A departing from this blessed Spirit of Truth, and a Rebelling 
 against this Perfect Law of Liberty in the Heart, and being at Liberty 
 to do our own Wills ; upon which cometh Reproof and Judgment." 
 
 In subsequent pages, Penn argues with much force that true 
 Spiritual Liberty will not be interfered with by the Friends' 
 meetings for discipline, whilst the tender, yet emphatic, way in 
 which he supports the Christian workers, whose services had been 
 lightly esteemed, has lost none of its suggestiveness by the lapse of 
 two centuries. " Beware," says he, " of that loose and irreverent 
 spirit, which has not those in high esteem among you, that are 
 faithful in the Lord's work, and that labour in his blessed word 
 and doctrine. I plainly see a coldness and shortness on this 
 hand ; and be the pretence as it wiU, it is not pleasing to the Lord. 
 They that love Christ, his servants are dear to them, and they bear 
 a tender regard to their trials, travels, spendings, and sufferings, 
 who seek not yours, but you, that you may all be ' presented blame- 
 less at the coming of the great God, and our Saviour Jesus Christ ' ; 
 that so the gospel ministry and testimony may be held up with 
 holy fervent love, and godly esteem, to the keeping under every 
 raw Eind exalted mind, and whatever may slight and turn against 
 it ; lest God, that has richly visited us with his Fatherly visitations, 
 and Day springing from on high, should remove his blessing from 
 amongst us, and place his 'Candlestick* among other people."* 
 * William Penn's Select Works, 1771, 605. 
 
micah's mother. i6i 
 
 It was now that William Rogers took the field with his book 
 from which we have already quoted. The third part of the 
 Christian Quaker exhibits in a pointed way the divergence between 
 the position of the writer and that of Fox, Barclay and Penn. 
 The author contends that he manifests how "there is but two forms 
 of government owned by the Children of Light : (i) The outward 
 government under which we live, unto the laws whereof we owe 
 either active or passive obedience, &c. (2) The inward government 
 of Christ who alone is Lord over the conscience, which is not 
 represented by persons visible to carnal eyes invested with power 
 from him to execute outward laws, prescriptions, orders, edicts, 
 or decrees in an outward form of government visible as aforesaid." 
 
 A great part of the work is, however, occupied with small 
 captious objections, and abuse of the author's opponents. Per- 
 haps one of the most interesting features of the book is the 
 evidence it affords of the means used for the sustentation of the 
 ministry amongst Friends at this period. Rogers hinted that 
 the cost of contributions to the Society's stock exceeded the 
 amount of tithes demanded of him by the Established Church 
 before he was a Friend. After a while Rogers gave up prose and 
 betook himself to rhyme, in which he enlarged further on this 
 
 topic. 
 
 " Next Fox his preachers did abound in wrath, 
 'Gainst them, whilst standing for the ancient path. 
 Until at length. Fox and his preaching tribe. 
 Were scorned like hirelings, that lived in pride. 
 Why so ? 
 
 When he had framed i' th' church a government 
 Preachers, approved by man, beyond seas went. 
 Who when they wanted moneys to proceed. 
 The Church her cash then did supply their need 
 If they their motion freely did submit. 
 To th' London church, and do as she thought fit. 
 The Spirit's motion in a home-bread swain. 
 Without a city stamp, seemed but in vain. 
 And yet sometimes, 'gainst such as Fox had sent ; 
 The Church dar'd not to shew her discontent."* 
 * A Second Scourge for George Whitehead, an Apostate Quaker, in a poem, 
 
 i68f, p. 3- 
 
 12 
 
l62 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 The drift of Rogers' contention will be gathered from the 
 passage quoted. He enlarges his complaint against the Friend 
 preachers, alleging that they had left their employments and 
 made a trade of preaching, and that the Society of Friends was 
 practically doing the same for its ministers as the Church of Eng- 
 land for its clergy. 
 
 Thomas Ellwood, who had cdready refuted Rogers in prose 
 and also in verbal conference, now crossed swords with him in 
 rhyme, in his Rogero. Mastix, or A Rod for William Rogers 
 (1685). The verse is better than Rogers, though hardly equal 
 to that which might have been expected in Milton's secretary. 
 We give Robert Barclay's summary of this rhyming controversy. 
 
 Thomas Ellwood wrote : — 
 
 " The blest Apostles sometimes others sent, 
 And sometimes, also sent by others, went. 
 How oft did Paul send Timothy and Titus, 
 Beloved Tychicus, Epaphroditus, 
 Onesimus, Erastus, and some others. 
 True Gospel preachers and beloved brothers ? 
 * * * * * 
 
 Can'st thou imagine they who thus were sent, 
 On the mere motion of the Apostle went ? 
 No. They no question in themselves did find 
 The same good motion stirring up their mind ; 
 With what the good Apostle did advise 
 The Holy Ghost in them did harmonize." 
 
 " Outward teachers " were needed in the Church. The case of 
 the parish preachers was quite beside the mark, and the objections 
 of the Society of Friends to them depended on grounds entirely 
 distinct. Ellwood contended that, while the Holy Spirit was 
 the " inward teacher " of every Christian man, 
 
 " Yet do the Scriptures plainly too declare. 
 And Paul himself doth testimony bear. 
 That Christ, when he ascended up on high. 
 Gave teachers for the work o' th' ministry ; 
 And gave those teachers gifts to fit them to 
 The work he had appointed them to do. 
 
micah's mother. 163 
 
 One of those teachers, too, in downright terms, 
 Th' Apostle Paul himself to be aflSrms, 
 By which we plainly see our gracious Lord 
 Did outward teachers to His Church afford. 
 Although they had the inward." 
 
 Ellwood further states : — 
 
 " That 'tis the Church's duty to supply 
 The needful wants ot all LenanuiHlfV'." 
 
 The Apostle Paul asserted his right to a maintenance, and 
 although he did not take it of the Corinthians, 
 
 " That what was lacking to him, privately 
 The Macedonian brethren did supply." 
 
 In reply to the cavil of Rogers, respecting the supply of the 
 needs of such preachers as were approved by the Church, and who 
 had a motion of God's Spirit to go on this mission service beyond 
 the seas, Ellwood replies : — 
 
 " Truth must not be refused 
 Because it is by evil men abused. 
 And truth it is, too plain to be denyed, 
 Christ's Churc h s hould for C hrist's Ministers provide." 
 
 Ellwood ends his argument with Rogers, by lines which have 
 proved prophetic : — 
 
 " Must Christ be so confined he may not send 
 Any but such as have estate§!.tp spend ? 
 God bless us from such doctrine and such teachers. 
 As will admit of none but wealthy preachers !"* 
 
 The WUkinson-Story controversy resulted in a schism of 
 
 some magnitude. Separatist congregations were formed at 
 
 Bristol, Reading, Calne and other places, which, however, soon 
 
 dwindled away. A very strong desire existed, with the Society, 
 
 for the return of the dissentients, who on the whole were treated 
 
 by their brethren with much tenderness — as may be seen in a 
 
 printed letter of William Penn's of 1692. Some of the leaders, 
 
 * Inner Life, 471-2. Several errors, made by Barclay in transcribing 
 these passages, have been corrected in the text. The frequent capitals, 
 omitted by Barclay, have also been omitted here and in the preceding 
 extract from Rogers. — [Editor.] 
 
164 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 like Francis Bugg, allied themselves with other denominations, 
 and became the bitterest assailants of Friends. After the death 
 of Fox, George Whitehead had the distinction of being the best 
 abused man in the Society — as he was also one of its most trusted 
 leaders. William Rogers lived to be an old man, and published 
 parts 6, 7, and 8 of his book. He never ceased to illustrate 
 Solomon's words : — "A brother offended is harder to be won 
 th an a strong city. " But the main body of the seceders returned 
 to the Society. Their hostility to the discipline had failed — the 
 system of Church meetings was too strongly established to be 
 overthrown — ^but the ranting spirit still showed itself in its op- 
 position to active, aggressive , evangelistic lab our, and helped 
 to bring over the Society that phase of quietism and luke-warmness 
 which led on to decrepitude and rapid decay.* 
 
 We have now travelled far from our starting point — the 
 virtues and failings of Micah's Mother, and in so doing have 
 reviewed — ^very imperfectly — that long controversy of which 
 this was a very subsidiary item. Sadness has, I suspect, 
 been the prevailing impression awakened by my narrative in the 
 minds of some who have followed it. The first generation of 
 Friends exhibited such heroic fortitude, such Christ-like sub- 
 mission in the presence of suffering and of persecution, that it is 
 startling to find them so divided in respect both to the theory 
 and practice of Church association. Their conceptions of the 
 kingdom of Christ were so spiritual that it is disappointing to 
 see how much of human infirmity entered into their labours for 
 the advcincement of that kingdom. But so it has ever been in 
 the history of the militant Church. Heavenly grace there abides 
 very near to human weakness. How prone men are to esteem 
 the ApostoUc age as one in which the Christian Church was con- 
 stantly walking in the fear of God and in the comfort of the Holy 
 Ghost, free from the deformities which afterwards defaced her 
 
 ♦ The Society retained not a little of its missionary zeal throughout the 
 reign of Queen Anne. Under date 171 1, Herbert S. Skeats in his History 
 of the Free Churches of England, says : — " Like George Fox, the preachers 
 of the denomination travelled throughout the length and breadth of the 
 land, and in such a sense, that the Quakers may be justly described as the 
 founders of the first home missionary organisations." (p. 210). 
 
micah's mother. 165 
 
 beauty ! But this glamour vanishes when the significance of the 
 Epistles to Galatia and Corinth is realised. There we see how 
 imperfectly the disciples obeyed, or even understood the precepts 
 of Christ, and how much Gentile vice still existed in their 
 midst. The reflections of Sewel, the historian, and many others 
 that might be quoted, show how the early Friends realised points 
 of similarity between their experience and that of the primitive 
 Church. They saw within their own body the counterparts of 
 Diotrephes who loved to have the pre-eminence, and of Alexander 
 the coppersmith. The opposition which attended George Fox 
 had many points of affinity with that which dogged the steps of 
 the Apostle Paul. From amongst the Ephesian bishops who 
 stood before him at Troas were corrupt men to arise who should 
 draw away disciples after them. Thus the experience of the 
 first Friends — ^under that name — was not novel in Christian life. 
 And furthermore — as we ponder the lessons of their experience, 
 many helpful and encouraging considerations present them- 
 selves before which sorrowful thoughts may perhaps give way 
 to the glow of grateful thanksgiving. 
 
 Let me first name a minor point. The cruel sufferings of 
 the early Friends must, one has been ready to think, have ban- 
 ished from their lives all the charm of fun and humour. This can 
 hardly have been the case, at any rate as respects Thomas 
 Ellwood. He was desperately in earnest, but he must have 
 stopped to laugh now and again as he wrote on, obediently to the 
 counsel of Solomon, " Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he 
 be wise in his own conceit." 
 
 Then again, if we are at aU staggered at the appearance of 
 these internal differences, in the hey-day of the Society's youth, 
 we cannot but admire the ability with which the danger was met. 
 The danger was indeed imminent — or all the men of light and 
 leading would not have mingled in the strife of tongues and of 
 pens. The extinction which overtook the societies of Seekers 
 and Ranters, the desolation which did lay waste many congre- 
 gations of Friends infected with their views, the speedy disappear- 
 ance of the dissentient Friends, all indicate that the destruction 
 
l66 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 of the Society would probably have ensued had their doctrines 
 and practices prevailed. 
 
 There is one historical fact which comes out very clearly in 
 the light of the narrative we have been considering. Robert 
 Barclay, William Penn, George Whitehead, Stephen Crisp, 
 Thomas Ellwood, each exhibit their characteristic powers, but 
 the central figure is that of George Fox. His ecclesiasticcil states- 
 manship was prescient and well proportioned. He never allowed 
 himself to be turned ciside from the work he had in hand, by the 
 defection of weak friends or the opposition of the ultra-spiritual. 
 If visionary people wrote him letters, he endorsed them " whymsie," 
 and went on his way. If scatter-brained converts ran amuck 
 of good order and wholesome usages, he told them they had 
 gone out into imaginations, and that he " judged them in the 
 Lord's power." He never wavered in his advocacy of the place 
 and authority of the Church meetings. He risked secession and 
 separation rather than stop the settlement of the Monthly and 
 Quarterly meetings. But whilst he was fashioning them as a 
 great centripetal force in the Society, he was at least as much 
 alive to the necessity of guarding the centrifugal energy of aggres- 
 sive evangelistic work, against the benumbing influences of 
 wealth, ease and mysticism. Fox often failed to clothe his 
 thpughts in the suitable garments of speech — but underneath 
 his rugged ungranunatical sentences the thoughts of a ruler of 
 men may be seen struggling for expression. It was not in stoical 
 disregard of censure, and of the severing of religious and personal 
 fellowship, that Fox laboured on for the last thirty years of his 
 life, building up the framework of the Society. His touching 
 epistles of expostulation with former friends, which I wish time 
 permitted me to read, and the humble boldness with which he 
 appealed to the example of his past life, recall the same traits in 
 the Apostle of Tarsus. So working 
 
 " Ever in his great Task-master's eye," 
 
 when the supreme moment came for this intrepid protester 
 against sacerdotal assumption to pass to his last account, his 
 
micah's mother. 167 
 
 dying words, " The seed reigns over all disorderly spirits," bear 
 witness to the stress of that long conflict whose history we have 
 been tracing. 
 
 Some years ago I delivered two lectures before this Associa- 
 tion, on the character of George Fox in connection with the 
 Macaulay charges.* It was then shown how utterly inconsistent 
 with facts was Macaulay's theory that Barclay and Penn were the 
 real artificers of the Society's polity. The statesman-like manner 
 in which Fox built up the disciplinary system, and the nobility 
 with which he bore himself in the face of opposition from former 
 friends, entirely discredited Lord Macaulay's portraiture. In 
 recently reviewing the facts of this chapter in Fox's biography, 
 in the light of some additional information, I am confirmed in the 
 correctness of the views expressed thirty years ago. 
 
 It has been interesting to find that the late Robert Barclay, 
 who probably did more than any living man in examining the 
 original authorities for these events, came to the same conclusion 
 by an entirely independent inquiry. He says : — " Great efforts 
 were now made to discredit Fox's motives, charging him with 
 ambition, and that his efforts for the establishment of a complete 
 system of Church government were in order to increase his 
 influence. Under these painful circumstances his religious 
 character shone brighter and brighter to the last. While some 
 of his eminent supporters used in the heat of controversy weapons 
 of sarcasm and invective which, without injury to their cause, 
 might have been weU spared. Fox, in his energetic labours for 
 the restoration of peace and unity, used his influence with 
 persons who had violated every sense of honour, with true 
 Christian gentleness, and touchingly appealed to their better 
 feelings in vindicating his motives."! 
 
 This department of the subject will be fitly closed by the 
 following sentences written by William Penn : — " But as in the 
 primitive times, some rose up against the blessed apostles of our 
 
 * An Inquiry into the Truthfulness of Lord Macaulay's Portraiture of 
 George Fox. London 1861. See Appendix I. 
 
 t Inner Life, 438, 439. 
 
l68 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 Lord Jesus Christ, even from among those that they had turned 
 to the hope of the gospel, who became their greatest trouble ; 
 so this man of God had his share of suffering from some that were 
 convinced by him, who through prejudice or mistake ran against 
 him, £is one that sought dominion over conscience ; because he 
 pressed by his presence or epistles, a ready and zealous compliance 
 with such good and wholesome things as tended to an orderly 
 conversation about the affairs of the church, and in their walking 
 before men. That which contributed much to this ill work was, 
 in some, a begrudging of this man the love and esteem he had, 
 and deserved in the hearts of the people ; and weakness in others, 
 that were taken with their groundless suggestions of imposition 
 and blind obedience."* 
 
 Returning now from the historical and personal aspects of the 
 Ranter controversy, may I point out the changes two centuries 
 have wrought in the manner of conducting such debates. In 
 the main these changes have been for the better. Writers of the 
 present day mostly recognise the claims of Christian courtesy far 
 more than did their predecessors. With but little exception. 
 Friends have desisted from hurling abusive epithets at one another 
 as they did in the seventeenth century. Envy, falsehood, slander, 
 errors, and false doctrines were amongst the milder epithets then 
 bandied backwards and forwards. 
 
 But if we have gained in this respect we have lost in some 
 others. The Friend controversialists of the Stuart period have 
 left an impressive example in respect to the thoroughness and 
 earnestness with which they set forth that which they believed 
 true. The present generation of Friends, living in an age of 
 unceasing activity — physical and mental — and with so many 
 other affairs demanding attention, seems as though it could 
 hardly devote the time and concentration of thought required for 
 the elucidation of questions which come up for consideration. 
 In the pamphlets I have introduced to your notice, we have seen 
 Ellwood following Rogers from paragraph to paragraph, not 
 disdaining to discuss with him questions almost irrelevant, like 
 * Introduction to Fox's Journal, xlviii, xlix. 
 
micah's mother. 169 
 
 the character of Micah's Mother, or whether the making of shoes 
 for men or for horses was the more honourable, if thus he could 
 establish his contention in relation to the main issues at stake. 
 It was because he realised the gravity of those issues, that he was 
 willing to devote so much labour to the details of his subject. In 
 the personal interview between Ellwood and Rogers, with a 
 company of Friends on both sides, which followed the Yearly 
 Meeting in 1683, the discussion began at six o'clock in the morn- 
 ing, and continued till noon. At the Drawwell Conference, near 
 Sedbergh, in 1676, four days were devoted to patiently talking 
 over the points in controversy. 
 
 Again, in such works as Robert Barclay's Anarchy of the 
 Ranters, in William Penn's Spiritual Liberty, and in many of 
 George Fox's epistles, the deep underl5nng principles governing 
 Church association and Church action are set forth with an ability 
 and a copiousness of exposition, of which the present generation 
 knows very little. With what care did Penn define terms 
 like " Spiritual Liberty." The necessity for such definition is 
 urgent — for without it people are constantly led into contention 
 through attaching different meanings to the same terms. As 
 Lord Bacon said : — " Men create oppositions which are not, and 
 put them into new terms so fixed, as, whereas the meaning ought 
 to govern the term, the term in effect govemeth the meaning." 
 
 In reviewing the progress of the Ranter controversy during 
 the forty years over which, in one shape or another, it extended, 
 one is impressed with the number of points, formerly matters of 
 debate, which have now been settled. They have completely 
 passed out of the range of controversy; the former sources of 
 division have entirely ceased to separate. 
 
 The necessity for the existence of a system of Church govern- 
 ment, and its compatibility with the enjojmient of spiritual teach- 
 ing and guidance for the individual, are now practically admitted 
 on all hands. 
 
 With respect to congregational worship, there is too much 
 of indifference with us, as there always has been, but the idea 
 that a regular attendance at meetings at a fixed time and place 
 
170 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 shows less spiritual-mindedness than an intennittent attendance, 
 has almost, if not entirely died out. 
 
 There does not any longer exist an appreciable difference of 
 opinion respecting the observance of a stated order in the pro- 
 ceedings of public worship. It is admitted with practical unani- 
 mity that such observances as the general rising of the congre- 
 gation, and the uncovering of the head during the time of public 
 prayer, are more in accordance with the instincts of a spiritual 
 religion than are diversities of practice, with their liability to 
 lapse into disorder. 
 
 No one is now found advocating an intennittent and spas- 
 modic holding of Church meetings as being less formal than their 
 stated sessions. The jealousy of the Yearly Meeting, as likely to 
 prove itself a Papal Council, has passed away. 
 
 The necessity of an orderly marriage procedure is universally 
 admitted. The dangers connected therewith have latterly been 
 in exactly the opposite direction to those of the first generation 
 of Friends. A strong party then imperilled the marriage proce- 
 dure from their restiveness at the imposition of necessary regula- 
 tions. Of recent times it has been imperilled by being surrounded 
 with so much of regulation as to make it unelastic and cumber- 
 some in operation. 
 
 The place and service of the Women's Meetings for Discipline, 
 so bitterly assailed two centuries ago, are no longer matters of 
 dispute. The utility of these meetings has been proved by the 
 experience of seven generations, and the hostility they at first 
 excited in the breasts of so many men has passed away. Any 
 dangers connected with them now lie in the direction of the Men's 
 Meetings being disposed to put too much of the Church's service 
 upon the sisters.* 
 
 * The following paragraph in Christian Discipline of the Religious 
 Society of Friends, vol. ii., p. xxiv., was written by J.S.R. in 1906: — 
 "Monthly and Quarterly Meetings of Women Friends were extensively 
 organised in the later years of the seventeenth century. In 1784 a 
 representative Women's Yearly Meeting was established, with power to 
 communicate directly with the subordinate Women's Meetings in this 
 country, and to correspond with Women's Yearly Meetings in foreign parts. 
 In 1896, London Yearly Meeting affirmed the position that "in future 
 
MICAH S MOTHER. I7I 
 
 Most satisfactory also has been the change of sentiment in 
 the Society in respect to the education of the young. The respon- 
 bilities of parental duty, and the blessing of religious teaching in 
 the home and in the school, require the support of the Church 
 from generation to generation, in view of the temptations to in- 
 difference and spiritual sloth. But there have not now been 
 for some generations, any considerable niunber of Friends who 
 profess to see in the neglect of home training, of Scriptural 
 teaching, and of religious instruction, the best preparation for the 
 work of the Holy Spirit on the minds of the young. No part of 
 the Society's economy evokes so much of enthusiasm as do its 
 public schools. 
 
 The problem of shaking hands has been completely solved. 
 I know of no one who fears that he may be sanctioning an empty 
 form by heartUy shaking hands with his friends. The great 
 majority are probably ignorant that such a fear, or shall we call 
 it a fad ? — did once prevail. 
 
 Experience has, however, proved that in a few minor particu- 
 lars the dissentient Friends took a more correct view as to the 
 functions of Church meetings than did their opponents. The inter- 
 ference of the disciplinary meetings with private conduct did, 
 in some districts, become excessive, leading to grotesque and most 
 injurious results. The recent policy of the Society respecting 
 the payment of ecclesiastical demands, and the censorship of 
 the press, has also been in accordance with the policy advocated 
 by the dissentient Friends two hundred years ago. Perhaps it 
 may be added that experience seems to have indicated that it is 
 difficult to introduce congregational singing, except occasionally, 
 on the same lines as vocal ministry and vocal prayer, in the 
 ordinary meetings of Friends. 
 
 women Friends are to be recognised as forming a constituent part of all 
 our Meetings for Church affairs equally with their brethren." This 
 decision, whilst not intended entirely to abolishseparateWomen'sMeetings 
 for Discipline by merging them in those of the other sex, necessarily 
 introduced large modifications of practice in the whole disciplinary system 
 of the Society, to which effect has been given in the regulations affecting 
 Meetings for Discipline, as set forth in the following pages." — [Editor.] 
 
172 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 In considering the group of solved questions just enumer- 
 ated, I would draw attention to the fact that their solution came 
 through action, and the logic of facts, rather than through aca- 
 demic discussion. Education may be taken as an illustration. 
 Fox, in appealing to parents, said that as a matter of fact many 
 families of religious persons who neglected the training of their 
 children, turned out worse than those of the openly irreligious. 
 The inference was irresistible that this neglect was not the true 
 note of a spiritual faith. The Yearly Meeting for 100 years kept 
 insisting on the duty of education. Ackworth School was at last 
 founded. Dr. Fothergill and his colleagues placed its superin- 
 tendence under a non-salaried officer. Not unnaturally was it 
 thought that the Superintendent's position was so responsible 
 and essentially religious that he should not be remunerated in 
 money. After testing this theory through three superintenden- 
 cies, facts indicated that the theory did not hold good, and it 
 was abandoned. No one now desires to have our schools super- 
 intended by unsalaried officers. Again, Scriptural instruction 
 was not at first directly inculcated at Ackworth. Experience 
 indicated the existence of a great want ; and slowly and with 
 divers misgivings that want was supplied. It was found 
 practicable so to teach Scripture truth that it should be the hand- 
 maid of spiritual religion — though not religion itself. Now there 
 is probably no feature of education to which the best mind of the 
 Society is so sensitive as the Scriptural and religious side. 
 
 But let us look a Uttle more closely at this interesting group 
 of solved ecclesiastical problems. May it not in the first place 
 awaken grateful thoughts that so many questions, formerly 
 debated not only with earnestness but with acrimony, should now 
 hardly ruffle the susceptibilities of any one ? Then, too, it is 
 observable that all the matters just enumerated are connected 
 with the internal economy of the Society. This circumstance 
 becomes additionally significant when we note the existence 
 of a smaller group of problems which were the subjects of earnest 
 debate two hundred years ago — and which remain so still. As 
 the solved problems relate to the inner life of the Society, the 
 
micah's mother. 173 
 
 unsolved ones are chiefly connected with its outside aggressive 
 work. Nor is the reason of this phenomenon far to seek. At 
 the close of the seventeenth century, the mind of the Society was 
 determined not to be diverted from the establishment and de- 
 velopment of its disciplinary system. Before this determination 
 all opposition ultimately gave way. But the Society's missionary 
 work at home and abroad was allowed to sink into abeyance. 
 Hence the debatable questions connected therewith could be de- 
 ferred for the decision of a future generation. When a revival set 
 in about 1760, the zeal of John Griffith and his colleagues still 
 chiefly ran in the channels of internal organisation, and when at 
 a stiU later period the evangelical movement in other Churches 
 made its warmth felt amongst Friends, it shaped their undenomin- 
 ational philanthropic efforts, rather than any associated evangelis- 
 tic work. It was not till the First-day Schools, and particularly 
 the expansion of the Adult School work, had again brought Friends 
 into close personal contact with the populations around them, 
 that questions connected with the place, work, sustentation and 
 distribution of the ministry, which had long slumbered, again 
 asstuned practical importance. 
 
 It is a significant and encouraging circumstance that one of 
 these slumbering questions, which assumed a somewhat threaten- 
 ing attitude twenty-five years ago, has been quietly solved by 
 the Friends' Foreign Mission Association, founded in 1867. We 
 have seen how William Rogers and his allies were exercised both 
 about the work and the expense of foreign missionary labour. 
 They were but too successful in discouraging it. A quarter of a cen- 
 tury ago, the preliminary educational work of George Richardson 
 and others, in respect to foreign missions, had accomplished 
 its object, and the Society woke up to pay its debt of Christian 
 love to the heathen in Madagascar and India. Very remarkable 
 has been the success of this movement, especially in view of the 
 comparatively recent time when Friends had no missionaries in 
 heathen lands.* 
 
 * The Society of Friends now has mission stations in India, Mada- 
 gascar, Syria, China and Ceylon. — [Editor.] 
 
174 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 It is no matter of surprise that some unsettlement of thought 
 should now be manifest amongst Friends in respect to the whole 
 subject of the Christian ministry. Evidences of this have been 
 apparent in recent discussions upon the Recording of Ministers, 
 and upon the work, sustentation, and distribution of the ministry 
 in connection with the labours of the Yearly Meeting's Home 
 Mission Committee.* Some of these items of debate are curiously 
 identical with those of two hundred years ago . It may be doubted 
 however whether there are now as many persons in the Society 
 who have probed these questions to their foundations, as there 
 were then. The Ranter controversy did a great educational work 
 for the first generation of Friends, of which there has been no 
 counterpart in our time. Until the publication of Joseph John 
 Dymond's pamphlet on the Ministry, f a very long interval had 
 elapsed since that subject had been discussed in print, to any con- 
 siderable extent, from the standpoint of a Friend. I have 
 elsewhere pointed out how the signal success of Friends in influ- 
 encing some of the great currents of national Ufe is tending to 
 withdraw their thoughts and energies from the affairs of their 
 own denomination. J Those affairs, two centuries ago, included a 
 grappling with the fundamental principles in the constitution 
 of a Christian Church, and notably with the functions, responsi- 
 bilities, and claims of its officers and its disciplinary meetings. 
 One of the objects of my lecture has been to show the service 
 rendered by the ecclesiastical statesmanship of Fox, by the logic 
 of Barclay, the definitions of Penn, and the humour of Ellwood, 
 and to express the conviction that all these talents still have 
 their place in the service of the Church. It is a worthy aim to 
 train men and women to serve their generation in the parlia- 
 mentary, municipal, or educational affairs of the nation, but 
 inasmuch as the great house of the Christian commonwealth 
 requires many vessels for its service, is it not the mind of the 
 Spirit that stiU not a few should chiefly devote themselves to 
 the affairs of the household of faith ? 
 
 • See chaps, v. and vi. 
 t Gospel Ministry in the Society of Friends, 1892. + See p. 228. 
 
MICAH S MOTHER. I75 
 
 It is certain that the life and progress of the Church will from 
 time to time present fresh problems for the solution of its members. 
 In respect of these, whether such as are now before us, or those 
 which may hereafter arise, past history shows the safety of bring- 
 ing them to the early test of Scripture and of facts. The e lemen- 
 tary error of the Ranters was their disregard of the fact — attested 
 by Scripture and experience — that God had appointed to man's 
 agency a certain place in the economy of His grace. Their theory 
 has much that recommends it, both to the reason and the feelings, 
 but it is vitiated by the evidence that Christ has otherwise 
 determined the laws of His kingdom. It might be serviceable 
 now if we could have a lucid restatement of the Scriptural teach- 
 ing upon the institution, object, and scope of the Christian 
 ministry — ^using the term in a sense inclusive of a wide variety of 
 spiritual gifts. 
 
 We have seen, in the course of the present lecture, that helpful 
 light is thrown upon the working out of elementary principles, not 
 only by the experience of the Christian Church as a whole, but by 
 the limited experience of the Society of Friends in particular. We 
 have also seen how important it is that terms employed in 
 discussion should be clearly defined, so that often-quoted phrases 
 may not cover and perpetuate misty and imperfectly con- 
 sidered ideas. 
 
 A single illustration will help to elucidate my meaning. A 
 good deal has been said latterly about a " separated ministry," 
 the relevancy of which chiefly depends on what you mean by the 
 phrase. If you mean a guild of men separated from their fellows, 
 as in the Roman Catholic priesthood, by vows of cehbacy and by the 
 assumption of sacerdotal functions, you have an engine of priest- 
 craft and spiritual despotism. But if you mean a body of men 
 and women called to the ministry of the Word by the Spirit of God 
 as the chief object of their lives, you have an institution of the 
 first moment to the Church's life, health, and work, preserved to 
 it from age to age in the appointment and the love of its Lord. 
 The power of the early Christian ministry was closely connected 
 with individual conviction that an Apostle was "separated 
 
176 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 unto the Gospel of God,"* and with the perception of the Church, 
 as at Antioch, that the Holy Ghost had bidden it "separate 
 Barnabas and Saul " to a given work.f In this scriptural sense 
 of the phrase a separated ministry might seem to be one of our 
 most urgent wants at the present time. When the Society of 
 Friends grasps the true magnitude and bearings of a line of policy, 
 it can surmount many obstacles in carrying it to a successful issue. 
 Notably has this been the case in respect to the Discipline, to Edu- 
 cation, to Foreign Missions. We believe that, in like manner, 
 a mastery of first principles as to the very purposes of Christian 
 association for advancing the Redeemer's Kingdom at home and 
 abroad, for which the Christian ministry is the chief instru- 
 mental agency, will help to solve in action these subsidiary ques- 
 tions of sustentation or distribution which may be formidable in 
 theory but yield readUy to the solvent of self-den5dng and perse- 
 vering work. 
 
 I venture to think that no chapter in our Society's history 
 is freighted for the reflective mind with a richer or more diversified 
 teaching than is that which I have been dealing with. As we have 
 passed from point to point, some of these lessons have been 
 indicated, and others are too obvious to require insisting upon. 
 I must have told my story very ill if it has not kindled in your 
 memories — as it does in mine — a fresh sense of our indebtedness to 
 the past ; if it has not impressed you as being pregnant with 
 suggestion in relation to the problems of the present ; and also as 
 throwing upon the horizon of the future both the shadow of 
 warning and the beam of trustful hope. 
 
 * Romans i. i. t Acts xiii. 2. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE PLACE OF THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS IN THE 
 RELIGIOUS LIFE OF ENGLAND.* 
 
 I. 
 
 Friends in the Seventeenth Century. 
 
 "D IBLE readers cannot fail to observe how repeatedly the Hebrew 
 poets and prophets sought to arouse zeal for God's service, or 
 to awaken moral and spiritual reformation, by appeals to the past 
 Estory oTtheu- nation. In fact, to a very large extent, both the 
 Old and the New Testament Scriptures are the histories of events 
 which transpired amongst the Jews and the nations with whom 
 they were brought in contact. It wiU not be disputed that an 
 intelligent apprehension of our Christian faith, and of the respon- 
 sibilities it imposes upon us, demands a knowledge of the facts 
 recorded in the Gospels. Correspondingly, some familiarity 
 with the history of the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth 
 century and of the subsequent Puritan movement may form a very 
 useful part of our mental equipment in dealing with the passing 
 questions of our own times. 
 
 What then were the salient facts in the history of the two 
 generations who first bore the name of Friends, or Quakers ? 
 I shall try concisely to answer this question and afterwards to 
 
 * Three papers read at the first Friends' Summer School (held at 
 Scarborough, August, 1897), and addressed, in the author's words, to 
 a gathering " animated by a common desire for help in the better discharge 
 of religious service, and one in syinpathy, if not in actual association 
 with the Society of Friends. These characteristics of the audience demanded 
 a different treatment of the subjects discussed from what would have been 
 suitable for a popular company, consisting of persons of differing religious 
 sentiments." 
 
 177 13 
 
178 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 indicate the spiritual significance of the facts that will come before 
 us. 
 
 The word Quakers occurs for the first time on the journals 
 of Parhament in 1654, having been coined some four years before,* 
 as a scornful sobriquet for a people who were bidding men to 
 tremble before the holiness and majesty of God. Their leader 
 was a Leicestershire shepherd, twenty-five years of age when 
 Charles I. came to the scaffold. George Fox deemed himself a 
 prophet, bearing a prophet's message to the world, and he was so 
 accounted by thousands of EngUshmen, when Oliver Cromwel] 
 became Lord Protector. "The children of light," otherwise 
 " The people called Quakers," were even then spreading overmany 
 parts of England and Wales, having also adherents in Scotland 
 and Ireland. Their ministers, animated by a fervent zeal, not only 
 laboured incessantly amongst the English-speaking peoples, 
 but also traversed Europe and penetrated into the ancient king- 
 doms of Asia and of Africa. Others, no less intrepid, braved terrible 
 sufferings, and a few years later martyrdom itself, at the hands 
 of the children of the Pilgrim Fathers, in the Colonies of North 
 America. 
 
 In 1656, the fanaticism of James Nayler, one of the most 
 popular of the Friend preachers, directed the attention of Par- 
 hament to the Society, and involved it in great discredit. His 
 fall did not however arrest its progress. His colleagues took to 
 heart the lessons of the event — the peril of unduly exalting and 
 separating one part of Gospel truth from its context — ^whilst 
 Nayler himself, by a repentance of touching sincerity, rebuked the 
 inhuman cruelty of his judges. 
 
 Cromwell was attracted towards Fox. The Protector recog- 
 nised the fortitude and nobility of the Friends who sisked to be 
 
 * In connection with current discussions upon the variations in Scrip- 
 ture narratives of the same events, it is curious to observe the different 
 accounts given by Robert Barclay and George Fox of the origin of the word 
 Quaker. When the Apologist in 1676 attributed it to the trembling of 
 the worshippers, when sitting in meeting, under the power of the Holy 
 Ghost [Apology, prop, xi., sect, viii.], he can hardly have been cognisant 
 of the Gervase JBennet episode, as narrated by George Fox in his Journal, 
 under date 1650. [Vol. i, p. 58.] 
 
FRIENDS IN THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF ENGLAND. I79 
 
 allowed to take the places of co-religionists lying in horrible 
 dungeons. There was, he said, a certain difference of character 
 between them and all the men he had before known. Favourable 
 as he was to religious toleration, Oliver was not able to shield 
 the Friends from persecution, and under his administration there 
 were sometimes not fewer than one thousand in prison at the same 
 time. The national revulsion from the straitness of Puritanism 
 to the licence of the Restoration did not mitigate the Friends' 
 sufferings, nor did it arrest their numerical growth. They faced 
 the persecution of the Episcopalians as boldly as they had done 
 that of the Presbyterians. Their growing numbers demanded 
 internal organisation and a system of Church government, which 
 Fox succeeded in establishing, in the face of a' most determined 
 opposition.* The struggle extended over some years, and shook 
 the Society to its centre. Meanwhile many of its adherents had 
 established themselves in the New World beyond the Atlantic. 
 Before the Habeas Corpus Act became the law of England, New 
 Jersey had been colonised, and its constitution settled on a broad 
 basis of popular and religious freddom. The foundation of Phila- 
 delphia in 1682 further stamped the impress of Quakerism on the 
 growing colonies in North America. The accession of William and 
 Mary in 1688, and the passing of the Toleration Act in the suc- 
 ceeding year, virtually emptied the English prisons of their Non- 
 conformist inmates. When Fox died, two years later, the religious 
 liberty for which he had so fearlessly laboured and suffered, had 
 to a great extent been secured in Great Britain and Ireland. The 
 visible tokens of success which attended the ministry of Fox were 
 very remarkable. At the time of his death, the Friends were 
 not fewer than 50,000 or 60,000 in this country, constituting more 
 than fifty per cent, of its Nonconformity, and equalling the com- 
 bined strength of the Roman Catholics, Presbyterians, Indepen- 
 dents, and Baptists, t They had founded two colonies in North 
 America, and were numerous in the other settlements. When 
 
 * See chapter ii. 
 
 f See Turner's The Quakers, 236 ; Rowntree's Quakerism, Past and 
 Present, 71. 
 
l80 JOHN STEPHENSON EOWNTREE. 
 
 persecution had been specially rife in London, the city merchants 
 had deprecated its continuance as interfering with their eommer- 
 cial prosperity. An opponent, however much he was exaggerating, 
 must have possessed some justification for asserting that no Bishop 
 of the Established Church had the control of as much money as 
 Fox had, in the later years of his life, for the service of the Society. 
 When the seventeenth century closed, a vast change in the whole 
 character and spirit of the Society had in reality set in, but so far 
 as appeared to outside observers, its members were enjoying 
 both religious and temporal prosperity. The spiritual power 
 which had enabled them to surmount the fanaticism of Nayler 
 and Perrot, as well as the impracticable hyper-spirituality of 
 Wilkinson and Story, was only less conspicuous than the fortitude 
 with which cruel persecution had been overcome, in the might 
 of passive resistance. The rise of Friends is, in its entirety, one 
 of the most remarkable chapters in the history of the Christian 
 Church. The influences by which it was accomplished were ex- 
 clusively moral and spiritual. Physical force had no place in the 
 movement, any more than it had in the first diffusion of Chris- 
 tianity. The military discipline which had made the armies of 
 the Commonwealth invincible was altogether foreign to the genius 
 of Quakerism, even in the days of its militant youth. Many of 
 Oliver's veterans became Friends, but their carnal weapons were 
 exchanged for those spiritual arms which are " mighty through 
 God to the pulling down of strongholds." The great majority of 
 the Friends were yeomen, artisans, tradesmen, soldiers, sailors, 
 and persons in the middle and himibler walks of life, with a small 
 infusion of clergy, gentry, and " honourable women." 
 
 What then was the attractive and cohesive force which had 
 gathered these people and endued them with such virtue to 
 labour or to suffer on behalf of that which they accounted " the 
 Truth ? " The safest course for arriving at a right answer to this 
 question will be to ask the persons immediately concerned, and 
 to take note of their replies. Respecting his own message Fox 
 says he was " to turn people to that inward light, Spirit, and grace, 
 by which all might know their salvation and their way to God ; 
 
FRIENDS IN THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF ENGLAND. l8l 
 
 even that Divine Spirit which would lead them into all truth, 
 and which I infallibly knew would never deceive any."* In his 
 proclamation of this message the speaker drew upon a deep per- 
 sonal experience of the things whereon he insisted. "The 
 inwardness and weight of his spirit," wrote Penn, " the reverence 
 and solemnity of his address and behaviour, and the fewness and 
 fulness of his words, have often struck even strangers with ad- 
 miration, as they used to reach others with consolation. The 
 most awful, living, reverent frame I ever felt or beheld, I must say, 
 was his in prayer. And truly it was a testimony he knew and 
 lived nearer to the Lord than other men ; for they that know Him 
 most wiU see most reason to approach Him with reverence and 
 fear."t 
 
 Isaac Penington, the son of Alderman Penington, who was a 
 member of the Long Parliament and Governor of the Tower of 
 London, wrote : " Had I not seen the power of God in this des- 
 pised people, and received from the Lord an unquestionable 
 testimony concerning them, I had never looked towards them ; 
 for they were otherwise very despicable in my eyes. And this I 
 cannot but testify concerning them, that I have found the life of 
 God in owning them, and that which God hath begotten in my 
 heart refreshed, by the power of life in them.":f 
 
 Robert Barclay, the son of Captain Barclay of Ury, one of 
 Gustavus Adolphus's soldiers, said : "I myself am a true witness 
 who, not by strength of arguments, or by a particular disquisition 
 of each doctrine, and convincement of my understanding thereby, 
 came to receive and bear witness of the truth, but by being secretly 
 reached by this life ; for when I came into the silent assemblies 
 of God's people, I felt a secret power among them which touched 
 my heart, and as I gave way unto it I found the evil weakening in 
 me and the good raised up, and so I became thus knit and united 
 unto them, hungering more and more after the increase of this 
 power and life, whereby I might feel myself perfectly re- 
 deemed." § 
 
 * Journal, i., 36. f Preface to Fox's Journal, xlvii. 
 
 \ Memoirs of Isaac Penington, 73. § Apology, prop, xi., sect. 7. 
 
l82 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 Margaret Fell endorsed a packet of her letters in these terms : — 
 " The epistles were written at the first appearance of truth amongst 
 us when we were young in it. The light of Christ being our first 
 principle, our minds being turned to it we saw perfectly there was 
 no safety or preservation of us out of sin and transgression, but 
 as we dwelt in the light. And so as we waited in it, and dwelt in it, 
 we came to witness a washing and cleansing by the blood of Jesus. 
 And we came to discern betwixt the precious and the vile, betwixt 
 the holy and the unclean, and betwixt the chaff and the wheat, 
 and between those that served God and those that served Him 
 not."* 
 
 The writer of these lines had long been a seriously minded 
 woman when her spirit was so wrought upon as she listened to 
 Fox's preaching that she could not keep her seat in Ulverston 
 church, "having never heard the like before." The preacher 
 had himself, after a long and weary search, found God the Father 
 of spirits to be very nigh and very precious to his own soul ; 
 and he possessed a magnetic power of leading his hearers up to 
 the same experience. 
 
 In 1671, travelling in Barbadoes, Fox tells how Colonel Lyne, 
 " a sober person," attended his meetings and said, " Now I can 
 gainsay such as I have heard speak evil of you ; who say you do 
 not own Christ, nor that He died ; whereas I perceive you exalt 
 Christ in all His offices, beyond what I have ever heard before." f 
 It would be easy to multiply testimonies like these, almost 
 indefinitely. Their phraseology woiild differ, but a common 
 agreement would run through all, that in association with the 
 " children of light," and in the reception of their faith, the writers 
 had been brought into a nearer, more soul-satisfying knowledge 
 of God than they had before realised. The cardinal reason why 
 George Fox became so eminent a leader of religious thought, and 
 accomplished the great work that he did, was his power, springing 
 from a first-hand personal experience, of arousing men to a 
 perception of the Divine immanence in their own hearts and 
 consciences. He brought men immediately to Christ. And that 
 * The Fells of Swarthmoor Hall, g6. \ Journal, ii., 153. 
 
FRIENDS IN THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF ENGLAND. 183 
 
 which was true of Fox was true in vaiying degree of his fellow- 
 preachers. I can entertain no doubt but that here we have 
 the essential explanation of the place which the Friends so 
 quickly attained to in the religious life of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, and am confirmed in the soundness of this view by observ- 
 ing that its truth is apparent to men of spiritual susceptibility, 
 who have studied the subject, though separated by wide eccles- 
 iastical differences from the stand-point of a Friend. The clear 
 but imspiritual intellect of Macaulay utterly failed to grasp the 
 significance and true nobility of Fox's character. There is no 
 greater blunder in the brilliant pages of The History of 
 England than the caricature portrait of George Fox.* The 
 more sympathetic mind of Bancroft only partially apprehended 
 the real inwardness of the Quaker movement when he discerned 
 in it a philosophy, instead of a religion. On the other hand, a 
 High Church clergyman, like Hancock, said the Friends 
 "bore to the world the clearest witness of God's redeeming grace 
 and forgiveness, which was heard in England during the whole 
 of the seventeenth century : they declared that no man, woman 
 or child under heaven was left without Christ's sufficient Light 
 and Grace. They bore a witness against all the efforts of worn and 
 restless spirits to find rest in outward alterations of the State and 
 Church, in reformations, godly disciplines, parliaments : the 
 Saviour of men comes to them where their disease is — ^within. 
 They bore also a more self-evident witness of condemnation 
 against the world than any of the sects were doing, since they 
 attested the Light and Grace of the Saviour in every one, and 
 that no one was left unspoken to by Him."t 
 
 Bishop Westcott wrote : — " Fox realised, as few men have 
 ever realised, that we are placed under the dispensation of the 
 Spirit : that the power from on high with which the risen 
 Christ promised to endue His people was no exceptional or trans- 
 sitory gift, but an Eternal Presence, an unfailing spring of energy, 
 answering to new wants and new labours. He felt that the Spirit 
 which had guided the fathers was waiting still to lead forward 
 * See Appendix i. f Tke Peculium, 33. 
 
l84 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 their children : that He who spoke through men of old 
 was not withdrawn from the world, like the gods of Epicurus, 
 but ready in all ages to enter into holy souls and make 
 
 THEM friends OF GoD AND PROPHETS. 
 
 " In this conviction Fox himself ' saw ' the Truth, Christ Him- 
 self shewing it. He gained, that is, the direct assurance that the 
 Gospel is not words, but facts, not a traditio n, but a voice even 
 now to the heart of man, which man can recognise" ancl'bnnjony" 
 m life."* 
 
 Canon Curteis, preaching before Oxford University, said : — ■ 
 " Behold . . this childlike soul, this babe in Christ, this man 
 of one book — ^but that book the Bible — step forth amid the 
 confused Babel that called itself EngHsh Christianity in the 
 seventeenth century, to bear testimony in the name of God to 
 the inner truth and meaning of aU these things that the sects 
 were battling over. He thought himself a prophet, a' Nabi,' like 
 one of those in the Old Testament. And, for my own part, I 
 will not undertake to say he was not. For his ' heart was hot 
 within him ; and at last he spake with his tongue.'" f It will 
 not be needful to adduce further evidence to support our conten- 
 tion that the power of the first generation of Friends primarily 
 resided in a realising sense of their habitual nearness to God. 
 Not in secret places, on sacred days, or with sacred persons was 
 this blessed presence — ihe real presence — to be alone known. 
 They would have said Amen to the recently found logion, as lately 
 expounded to us : " Christ is with the disciple, not merely in the 
 act of worship, where two or three are gathered together, but in 
 the everyday labour of the world. In labour He is found. He is 
 with us just as much in toil and work as in fasting and meditation 
 and prayer. His presence is as real when we raise the stone, or 
 cleave the wood, as when actually engaged in worship." 
 
 This sense of the Divine immanence has not, however, been 
 
 the exceptional possession of one body of seventeenth century 
 
 Englishmen. It has been recognised by men in every age, and of 
 
 many races. Canon Curteis, whose Hampton Lectures have 
 
 * Social Aspects of Christianity, 125. f Dissent, 254. 
 
FRIENDS IN THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF ENGLAND. 185 
 
 been already quoted, would minimise the significance of this wit- 
 ness of the early Friends, because the " majestic truth " they 
 proclaimed was but that department of the Church's creed which 
 declares :— " I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of 
 Life, Who proceedeth from the Father and the Son ; Who, with 
 the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified ; 
 Who spake by the prophets."* 
 
 Peim would not have dissented from this doctrine. Primitive 
 Christianity Revived was the title of a treatise he published, des- 
 criptive of the doctrines and practices of the Friends. It does 
 not, however, lessen the significance of this, their primary affirma- 
 tion, that it was not for the first time enunciated by them. The 
 truth which was dear to Robert Barclay and to Stephen Crisp, 
 was not less precious in their estimation because they knew 
 that it had also been precious to Echard, and to Tauler, and to 
 Thomas a Kempis, and to many other of God's saints. The 
 re-discovery and authoritative proclamation of a forgotten or 
 greatly obscured truth was a notable service to the Church univer- 
 sal, just as was that of Martin Luther, in setting forth the doctrine 
 of justification by faith in Christ, though, fifteen centuries before, 
 St. Paul had luminously expounded the same doctrine to the 
 Roman Christians. A more pertinent and fruitful line of inquiry 
 is suggested by the consideration that whUst many men of spiritual 
 discernment have insisted on the truth of the Divine immanence, 
 so few of these have concurred with the Friends as regards other 
 branches of their doctrine and practice. Three Roman Catholic 
 contemporaries of George Fox — Pascal, 1623-1662, Guyon, 
 1646-1717, and Molinos, 1627-1696, were at one with him in 
 teaching the reality of the Divine indwelling. There was un- 
 doubtedly a further measure of agreement in a joint recognition 
 of the requirements of personal obedience and practical holiness 
 of life, as conditions for realising this indwelling. But presently, 
 the Romanist and the|Protestant parted company ; the former 
 conformed to the Church's ritual, partook of the mass, confessed 
 to the priest, and virtually accepted the whole Papal hierarchical 
 
 * Dissent, 252. 
 
l86 JOHN STEPHENSOX ROWNTREE. 
 
 system. Fox discarded rite and ceremony, and every form of 
 exclusive sacerdotalism. Molinos tried to build up his friends in 
 a Spirit-governed life in association with all the pageantry of 
 the Romish church ; Fox laboured for the edification of his friends, 
 in separation from existing ecclesiastical systems, and in the 
 disuse of sacramental media. To discover the explanation of 
 this wide divergence in practice, it wiU be desirable to look at the 
 pathway of religious experience trodden by Fox. It was a path- 
 way which could hardly have been so trodden in any other period 
 than that of Puritan England. 
 
 When the Long Parliament met, the Authorised Version of 
 Holy Scripture had been read by the English people through the 
 lifetime of an entire generation, and its influence was showing itself 
 in many directions. The English Bible had quickened the desire 
 for pohtical enfranchisement, for intellectual freedom, for de- 
 liverance from regal and priestly tyranny, and for a presentation 
 of religion which should be more spiritual, practical, and fruitful 
 in bettering the lot of the common people than that offered by 
 Romish priests, Anglican prelates, or Presbyterian ministers. 
 We can mark the evidences of these yearnings in Milton's stately 
 verse. Few of his lines are more familiar, through constant 
 quotation, than those in which he tells of the people's discovery 
 that— 
 
 " New Presbyter is but Old Priest writ large " ; 
 
 or that, under var5dng teaching — 
 
 " The hungry s heep lo ok up and are not fed." 
 
 Edwards's Gangrmna, published hi 1643, is invaluable for 
 enabling us to hear, as it were, the multitude of voices which 
 then rent the air discussing every phase of rehgious faith and 
 practice. Edwards was himself a Presbyterian minister, who 
 would have had all England brought under a national system of 
 religion, uniform with that of Scotland. The want of uniformity 
 permitted by the Independents distressed him, and he went on 
 cataloguing sentiments he deemed heretical, all of which, he says, 
 had their advocates, tiU he had attained to the formidable total 
 
FRIENDS IN THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF ENGLAND. 187 
 
 of 252. Here we see reflected, as in a mirror, the state of English 
 opinion, when Fox left his home at Drayton, to enter on that long 
 search for truth and peace of which he has told the story in his 
 Journal. It was an England as different as possible from that of 
 the Wesleys a century later, when interest in religion was at its 
 lowest point. In the days of Marston Moor and of Naseby, Eng- 
 land was seething with debate concerning religion. This was the 
 theme in the mouths of men ever3/where, whether in Parliament 
 or the Westminster Assembly, the Court of Charles or the army 
 of Fairfax. The London apprentices, the Bedfordshire peasantry 
 who listened to Bunyan, the men who were looking wistfully to the 
 New England colonies, and those who were corresponding 
 with the reformed Churches of Scotland or of Germany, aU had 
 their thoughts occupied with religious questions. Up to his 
 twentieth year Fox must have had the upbringing of a Leicester- 
 shire peasant, living in a superior Puritan home, leading an orderly 
 life, attending church, and having intercourse with the local clergy. 
 Then followed some years wherein these associations were almost 
 entirely suspended. The young shepherd moved from place to 
 place, asking questions of all sorts of people, finding everywhere 
 the great interest tciken in religion, but nowhere an exempUfica- 
 tion of it which met all the longings of his hesirt, or commended 
 itself altogether to his conscience ; though he admits meeting 
 with many " tender people." Hence Fox was increasingly thrown 
 back upon mental introversion, on private prayer, soUtary waiting 
 upon God, Scripture reading, and withdrawal from human 
 fellowship : nights and days he passed in the fields and on the 
 moors alone with his Bible and his God. When the vision of the 
 Eternal was at last vouchsafed him, it came to a man who had 
 been loosened from aU ecclesiastical associations ; he was not 
 then breathing an ecclesiastical atmosphere. His environment 
 was as different as possible from that of Luther in the monastery 
 of Erfurt, or of Molinos in the city of Rome, when they passed 
 through their spiritual baptisms. In the spiritual, as in the 
 physical world, life takes its complexion, in degree at least, from 
 its surroundings. In the instance before us we have a man 
 
l88 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 primarily framing his conceptions of Christian truth from the 
 Bible, knowing and feeling all the wants and aspirations of the 
 common people from whose ranks he had himself sprung. Can 
 it be any matter of surprise that the Gospel of the Kingdom 
 presented itself to Fox in very different guise from that which it 
 assumed to men who had never passed from beneath the 
 shadow of the monastery, or had their gaze removed from the 
 visible things, which are temporal, to the unseen things which are 
 eternal ? 
 
 When Fox became conscious of the nearness of the Spirit 
 of God to his own soul, he never dreamt for a moment that this 
 was a privilege peculiar to himself. He constantly appealed to 
 the universality of the light, " the true Light," "which lighteth 
 every man coming into the world." Nor did he deem that 
 the continued manifestation of this light was dependent upon 
 the ministrations of any order of men, or was limited to sacred 
 times or places. He did, however, clearly recognise that the 
 heavenly indwelling was not to be known independently of 
 conduct fashioned in obedience to the Divine will. It is hardly 
 possible to exaggerate the stress laid by the early Friends 
 upon this prominent feature of their teaching. Already 
 many persons had declared the doctrine of the Divine 
 immanence, men and women of saintly lives, as well as others 
 who had counted it rather as a philosophical dogma than as 
 a religious principle fashioning conduct, but few, if any, had 
 insisted with equal earnestness that doing the Divine will 
 is the condition for growing in the knowledge of God's 
 truth. Hence, everything that appeared contrary to the Divine 
 will — the usages of society, the ceremonies of religion — sanctioned 
 by huma n authority, or con secrated by long usage, was brushed 
 aS3e"6r testified against in obedience to apprehended duty. It 
 is open to us to think some of these apprehensions of duty 
 mistaken, and yet to recognise that the people who gave such 
 unquestioning obedience to the dictates of the inspeaking 
 Word, were dwelling by the perennial springs of spiritual 
 power. 
 
FRIENDS IN THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF ENGLAND. 189 
 
 Bishop Westcott admirably described the attitude of the 
 early Friends towards gospel truth, as affected by their view 
 of the Divine indwelling : — 
 
 " The facts of intercourse with God, of affinity to God, must, 
 if they axe received, find expression in life. The Ufe of believers 
 is, in Christ's own words, the revelation of God to the world. Fox 
 accepted the consequence and insisted upon it. He could not 
 conceive of reUgion and morality apart. His labours were from 
 first to last a comment on the text, ' If we live by the Spirit, by the 
 Spirit let us also walk.' For him^, justification wels indeed a making 
 and not an accounting just, not forensic, but vital ; and conduct 
 was the sign of the fact. No one ever required more absolutely 
 than Fox that ' righteousness, peace, joy,' should be the marks 
 of the Christian commonwealth. ... In spite of every infirmity 
 and disproportion, he was able to shape a character in those who 
 followed him which, for independence, for truthfulness, for vigour, 
 for courage, for purity, is unsurpassed in the records of Christian 
 endeavour. And this he did by connecting the loftiest thoughts 
 and the commonest obligations aUke with a personal sense of a divine 
 communion. He made each member of his society responsible 
 for his brethren. He opened to all, without distinction, the oppor- 
 tunity for spiritual influence : he imposed upon all the charge of 
 social duties. He jealously guarded the sacred dignity of man. 
 . . . He taught the Friends to trust to principles and leave 
 consequences to God : to confess their ideal even when attainment 
 was for the time impossible. We cannot wonder therefore that 
 the Society of Friends has achieved results wholly out of proportion 
 to their numbers."* 
 
 A singular charm of the Scarborough Summer School has 
 been the enthusiasm of the different lecturers for their subjects — 
 an enthusiasm which they have measurably communicated to their 
 hearers. Whilst we are prepared to hail the resurgent forms 
 of Arioch, of Ellasar, and of Chedorlaomer, should they present 
 themselves duly accredited, and are not regardless of the aureoles 
 on the brows of St. Patrick and St. Columba, it ought also to be 
 possible to make the history with which we are now occupied 
 so real, that it too would throb with pathos and be vivid in the 
 afHuence of its practical teaching. If the Friends of the 
 
 * Social Aspects of Christianity, 128, 129, 130. 
 
igO JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 seventeenth century had numbered in their ranks a story-teller 
 like Bunyan, or a poet like Whittier, the world would not be so 
 ignorant of them as it is. How remarkably were they in advance 
 of their age, not on one subject only, but on so many ! When we 
 mention religious liberty — ^living wages for English labourers — 
 work for beggars — ^reformation of the penal code — the purification 
 of prisons — the abolition of oaths — the furtherance of 
 international peace — the enfranchisement of the negro slave — 
 the just treatment of the Red Indian — we do but make a very 
 imperfect catalogue. Most of us have heard of the mean 
 estimation in which women were formerly held, even by men 
 so wise as Socrates, the son of Sirach, and the historian ^Edda. 
 From this error— or probably I ought to stay this low stage of 
 evolution — the majority of the early Friends were notably 
 delivered. It is now understood that residence, however brief, 
 in a university town is almost essential for speaking authoritatively 
 on the educational requirements of women, but two centxuies 
 ago this privilege was not available to the Friends, and indeed 
 opinion was in a deplorably retrograde state at Oxford. When 
 Elizabeth Leavens and Elizabeth Fletcher visited that 
 city, the undergraduates are reported to have tied the ladies 
 together with a cord, put them under a pvunp, and dragged them 
 through a ditch. A cruel flogging followed a few days afterwards. 
 How far removed was this brutality from the policy of the 
 Leicestershire peasant, who, with few advantages of education or 
 of culture, but with a nature made sensitive to the inbreathings 
 of God's Spirit, opened the Christian ministry to women, gave 
 them a responsible share in the government of the Church, 
 defined in noble words the wide range of female education, and 
 extracted from Scripture every passage from Genesis to 
 Revelation that could encourage women faithfully to discharge 
 their priestly offices in the home and in the Church ! When the 
 Parish Councils' Act declared that sex was not to constitute a 
 disqualification for office ; * and when the members of this 
 Summer School hsten to the wise and eloquent words which fall 
 * 67-7 Vict. ch. 73, 1894, sec. iii. 2. 
 
FRIENDS IN THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF ENGLAND. I9I 
 
 from its lady lecturers, we share the triumph of the enlightened 
 policy enunciated and suffered for by Fox. 
 
 How then do we stand in regard to the question proposed 
 for consideration at the outset of this discussion ? Some of the 
 positions reached are matters of fact — hardly admitting of 
 challenge — e.g. the commandin g position, numeri cal and moral, 
 occupied by Friends when the seventeenth century expired ; 
 others are necessarily more open to debate, as being the result 
 of individual opinion. May I indicate, under six or seven heads, 
 the salient points established, in my apprehension, by the facts 
 that have come before us, and some of the lessons that arise 
 out of them ? 
 
 (i) I would emphasise the fact that the Friends arose at the 
 most rehgious period of Enghsh history — ^not, hke the Methodists, 
 a century later, when ' the people were practically destitute of 
 religion, but when a presentation of Christianity was required 
 more spiritual, ethical, and practical in shaping conduct than 
 any offered by existing ecclesiastical systems. 
 
 (2) By the concurrent testimony of many witnesses the 
 " people called Quakers " were recognised as different from 
 other religionists, whether the difference was liked or disliked. 
 They constituted a fresh element in English rehgious life. By 
 their foes they were bitterly hated throughout the whole of the 
 seventeenth century. Such were the votaries of pleasure, the 
 lovers of sport, music, art, and the drama ; the clergy who 
 found their services dispensed with and their tithes not paid ; 
 whilst saintly men like Bunyan, Baxter, and Roger Williams 
 were honestly alarmed at the progress of a faith which seemed 
 to them derogatory to the authority of Scripture, and dishonouring 
 to the incarnation and sacrificial death of the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 On the other hand, multitudes who did not concern themselves 
 with the Friends' theology greatly appreciated their integrity 
 in trade. Mothers sent their little children to the shops where 
 they would be honestly dealt with. Visitors resorting to 
 Scarborough sought out the Friend lodging-house keepers as 
 desirable hosts whilst tarrying by the sea-side. Even those 
 
192 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 who might be offended at their singular speech, and dislike their 
 sober attire and unwonted usages, wept over their sufferings, 
 did homage to their constancy under persecution, and esteemed 
 them as kindly and helpful neighbours. 
 
 (3) Within a period shorter than the reign of Queen Victoria, 
 the Society arose and grew to a numerical strength which placed 
 it at the head of the Free Churches of Great Britain. It had 
 founded colonies — ^homes of civil and religious liberty. It had 
 established a marriage ceremonial which had been recognised 
 by the courts of law, established a system of registration of 
 births, marriages, and deaths, and provided places of sepulture 
 for its dead. For a period of forty years it had endured a terrible 
 persecution, and by the might of passive resistance had borne 
 a foremost part in working that change in public opinion towards 
 religious liberty which was embodied in the provisions of the 
 Toleration Act. 
 
 (4) The growth and progress of the Society were repeatedly 
 imperilled by acts of fanaticism and of foUy. Men and women, 
 sometimes maddened by suffering, proved unable to bear the 
 strain imposed by the conscious possession of spiritual power, 
 or the adulation of flatterers. In others there was a mental 
 incapacity to see that spiritual lilpf frty is not incnrnpatible with — 
 and indeed requires for its permanency — order, decency, 
 org^jfiaikffl.aD<i the ministrations of office bearefsmT:l[ie"Cliurcii. 
 
 (5) The central source of the power of the Society was, we 
 hold, the assured faith of its people in the reality of immediate 
 spiritual intercourse between man and God, the blessedness of 
 this communion being more or less consciously experienced by 
 very many amongst them. It was an experience open to all 
 who were walking in the Light, without distinction of race, station, 
 sex, or age ; it was ^ altogether indeBeii^,^t^^_sacredri.aces, 
 sacred buildings, sacred times, or sacred persons. 
 
 ""niBTToTEfi same source, in a^SetefioiTwitih human frailty, 
 or through dislocation from its appointed relationship to corre- 
 lative truth, the majority of their troubles are attributable. The 
 humility and sobriety of Nayler gave way before the temptation 
 
FRIENDS IN THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF ENGLAND. I93 
 
 to spiritual pride ; Perrot was successively the claimant of 
 spiritual illumination, the pertinacious opponent of order in public 
 worship, and finally the persecutor of his quondam friends. Story, 
 Rogers, and Wilkinson were leaders of a bitter opposition, extend- 
 ing over years, to the establishment of Church government 
 in the Society, the recognition of the place of women in Church 
 government and ministry, and, generally, to the use of means 
 for the maintenance and spread of Gospel truth. 
 
 (7) A final consideration arising out of the foregoing is 
 the wisdom of reverently observing, and practically accepting as 
 a principle of conduct, the respective places assigned in the Gospel 
 economy to the immediate ministrations of the Holy Ghost, and 
 to human effort. The teaching of Scripture, the long story 
 of the Church, the present-day facts of individual and congrega- 
 tional life are all available for our guidance. Is it not their 
 harmonious testimony that redeemed and illumined men are 
 to be " workers together with God" in furthering the purposes 
 of His grace ? 
 
 " . . . God, whose pleasure brought 
 Man into being, stands away 
 
 As it were a handbreadth off, to give 
 Room for the newly-made to Uve, 
 And look at him from a place apart. 
 And use his gifts of brain and heart. 
 Given, indeed, but to keep for ever." 
 
 II. 
 
 The Attitude of Friends towards Language and Religious 
 
 Liberty. 
 
 I cannot attempt in the present series of lectures to review 
 the entire history of the Society of Friends. If such a 
 review were possible, the sequel to the point reached in the 
 former paper would be an examination of the remarkable change 
 which came over the Society in the period covered by the reigns 
 of William III., Anne, and the first and second Georges. It was 
 
 14 
 
194 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 a change which transformed the most aggressive of Protestant 
 denominations into one permeated by quietism, retiring more 
 and more from conflict with outside foes, becoming increasingly 
 self-centred and concerned in internal organisation. If the 
 year 1930 should find the Salvation Army exhibiting a Church 
 life resembling that of the " Brethren " at the present day, the 
 change woidd hardly be greater than that which came over the 
 Friends in the thirty or forty years succeeding the death of Fox. 
 But we have not the time necessary for undertaking such an 
 historical study, and it has appeared preferable to consider the 
 attitude of Friends towards two subjects, apparently so little 
 connected as human speech and religious Uberty, which have 
 nevertheless in their view been intimately associated, as matters 
 of conduct and of conscience. I propose, then, to invite attention 
 to that which has been said by some of our poets, and to note 
 their view of the impress made upon the world by Friends. 
 
 The first part of Hudibras, Samuel Butler's famous satire on 
 Puritanism, was published in 1662. The second part, which 
 appeared in the succeeding year, contains one of the earUest 
 references in British poetry to Friends : — 
 
 " Quakers (that, like to lanthorns, bear 
 Their light within 'em) will not swear. 
 Their gospel is an accidence. 
 By which they construe conscience. 
 And hold no sin so deeply red. 
 As that of breaking Priscian's head, 
 (The head and founder of their order. 
 That stirring hats held worse than murder). 
 These thinking th'are obliged to troth 
 In swearing, wUl not take an oath: 
 Like mules, who, if th'have not their will 
 To keep their own pace, stand stock stUl."* 
 
 Dryden published the Hind and Panther in 1678. He only 
 gives two lines to the Friends, so far as I have observed : — 
 
 " Among the timorous kind the quaking hare 
 Professed neutraUty, but would not swear." 
 
 * Part ii. canto ii. 219. 
 
FRIENDS IN THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF ENGLAND. I95 
 
 The Essays of EUa, whilst models of pure English prose, axe 
 poetical in the delicacy of their perceptive power. In his essay 
 on Imperfect Sympathies, Lamb says : — 
 
 " The indirect answers which Quakers are often found to return 
 to a question put to them may be explained, I think, without the 
 vulgar assumption that they are more given to evasion and equivoca- 
 ting than other people. They naturally look to their words more 
 carefully and are more cautious of committing themselves. They 
 have a peculiar character to keep up on this head. They stand in 
 a manner upon their veracity. A Quaker is by law exempted from 
 taking an oath. The custom of resorting to an oath in extreme 
 cases, sanctified as it is by all religious antiquity, is apt (it must be 
 confessed) to introduce into the laxer sort of minds the notion of two 
 kinds of truth — the one applicable to the solemn affairs of justice, 
 and the other to the common proceedings of daily intercourse. As 
 truth bound upon the conscience by an oath can be but truth, so in 
 the common afiS.rmations of the shop and the market-place a latitude 
 is expected and conceded upon questions wanting this solemn coven- 
 ant. Something less than truth satisfies. It is common to hear a 
 person say, " You do not expect me to speak as if I were upon my 
 oath." Hence a great deal of incorrectness and inadvertency, short 
 of falsehood, creeps into ordinary conversation, and a kind of second- 
 ary or laic-truth is tolerated, where clergy-truth, oath-truth, by the 
 nature of the circumstances, is not required. A Quaker knows none 
 of this distinction. His simple affirmation being received upon the 
 most sacred occasions, without any further test, stamps a value upon 
 the words which he is to use upon the most indifferent topics of life. 
 He looks to them naturally with more severity. You can have of 
 him no more than his word."t 
 
 Tennyson does not write so sj^mpathetically as Lamb, when 
 he notes the sometimes subtle distinctions of Friendly speech. 
 In his Northern Farmer : New Style, we find : — 
 " Do'ant be stunt : taake time : I knaws what maakes tha sa mad. 
 Warn't I craazed fur the lasses mys6n when I wur a lad ? 
 But I knaw'd a Quaaker feller as often 'as towd ma this : 
 ' Doant thou marry fur munny, but goa wheer munny is ! ' " 
 
 More pleasantly, Longfellow says that when Evangeline 
 
 " landed, an exile. 
 Finding among the children of Perm a home and a country, 
 
 ,t Mf * * * * * 
 
 f Elia and Eliana, 79. 
 
196 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 Something at least there was in the friendly streets of the city. 
 Something that spake to her heart, and made her no longer a stranger ; 
 And her ear was pleased with the Thee and Thou of the Quakers, 
 For it recalled the past, the old Acadian country. 
 Where all men were' equal, and all were brothers and sisters." 
 
 I^ Myj|l] be seen that the five distinguished authors here quoted 
 
 have all fastened upon their soeechasbeing a characteristic 
 
 -,'wiv^»»..^...-l^.^j..^ ^^^^^^ .^^A. I iwnw*wi^ ^.... ^ iHi -n II II 
 
 of Friends. Nor can this be a matter of surpnse, for undoubteciiy 
 they have attached great moment to various matters of language. 
 We have before seen that their central thought of the Divine 
 immanence in man has, to a large extent, been held practically 
 as a principle of conduct, not sentimentally as a doctrine of 
 philosophy. Spiritual affinity with Christ implies friendship, 
 and friendship does not co-exist with wilful disobedience. Much 
 of Christ's teaching related to human speech, because this is an 
 index of the state of the heart and mind : "By thy words thou 
 shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned." 
 Truth fulness, reverence, a n d purity of s peec1 ;] | were seen by Fox 
 and his_comrades to be strong:lyjnsisted upon in Scripture , and 
 to be closely associated with personal holiness. So they applied 
 these spiritual principles, ingeniously, comprehensively, and 
 uncoinpromisingly to the reform of human speech : sometimes, 
 it should be frankly said, with a zeal that outstripped knowledge. 
 But even when we do not unite with all the scruples of the early 
 Friends, as very few now do, if the root of these scruples be 
 traced out, it will almost always be found to lead up to one or 
 more of the great spiritual principles just indicated. We can 
 hardly wonder that Butler saw a new grammarian, a Priscian, 
 in Fox, when we recur to the catalogue of reforms in language 
 which he originated, or appropriated from others. They fall 
 under five or six heads : — (i) The avoidance of flattering titles ; 
 (2) Of terms derived from heathen mythology ; (3) Of words 
 implying that all times and seasons were not equally good ; (4) 
 Of terms used in an applied and possibly misleading sense, like 
 church for the building in which the Church meets ; and (5) The 
 refusal to take an oath under any circumstances, whilst alwasrs 
 
FRIENDS IN THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF ENGLAND. I97 
 
 Speaking the truth. Some of these scruples it was absolutely 
 impossible to carry out universally, and others have not per- 
 manently commended themselves to the consciences or judgments 
 of men. But we can see underlying all the sense of the constant 
 Christian obligation to truthfulness, rever ence, a nd purity in 
 speedi. The present generation of Friends have mostly aban- 
 doned the majority of those linguistic peculiarities, which their 
 predecessors deemed so important. This may have been a right 
 course without its implying that the scruples felt in the seventeenth 
 century were unworthy of regard. Some of those scruples have 
 had effect given them in a different direction from that which was 
 first suggested. George Fox proposed to remove the invidious 
 distinction of persons implied in the use of " thou " to some and 
 of " you," to others, by addressing all with the singular pronoun. 
 The popular democratic growth in language has taken the 
 opposite direction of addressing the plural pronoun to all, without 
 distinction of rank and station. In a language like the English, 
 so rich in fossil history, it was impossible to eliminate all the 
 terms derived from heathen mythology — even had it been 
 desirable. When, for instance, Thursday and Friday have 
 become Fifth and Sixth days, we are still left with scores of towns 
 and villages, like Thorganby and Fridaythorp, commemorating 
 the same deities. With the larger knowledge of language now 
 enjoyed, it cannot be a matter of surprise that many of the 
 ancient scruples of the Friends have been abandoned. I cannot, 
 however, but feel that true thoughts underlay most of these 
 scruples, and that still the obligation to truthfulness in speech 
 requires to be steadily maintained. Why should persons 
 subscribe themselves the " obedient servant " of a single corres- 
 pondent, or of a constituency, when so many unobjectionable 
 formulas are available ? The responsibility of human speech 
 has been admirably enforced by writers like Trench, Alford, and 
 Goulbum, occupying an altogether different standpoint from that 
 of the early Friends but substantially agreeing with them in this, 
 that they would have men to weigh their words. Why should 
 not we be more jedous of the purity of our noble language ? 
 
igS JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 The entire disuse of oaths was the most memorable and 
 interesting item in the reform of human speech proposed by the 
 Friends. The subject deserves more attention than it usually 
 receives. The Friends were by no means the first Christians 
 who had scrupled to take judicial oaths, but they succeeded, in 
 the years 1650-90, in elevating the question to a position it had 
 never before occupied. They constantly appealed to Christ's 
 command, " Swear not at all," and urged the cogency of the 
 reason assigned for not exceeding " Yea, yea ; nay, nay " — that 
 it " Cometh of evil." Any kind of swearing, said the early Friends, 
 introduces two standards of truthi'ulness ! "TlU'l Wi!!jlllllUIiy"R>"'l!U ' 
 speech ahsolutelytmt'Hf Sunder 'iU'"cirtUfKStances. This had been 
 fKedoctnneof'johh WycKUHU ' S l f S rWXf S ffH^ ias^ leaders of the 
 Albigenses, as well as of many of the early Baptists to whom 
 the Anglican Church had replied in its thirty-ninth Article : — 
 
 " As we confess that vain and rash Swearing is forbidden 
 Christian men by our Lord Jesus Christ and James, His Apostle, so 
 we judge, that Christian Religion doth not prohibit, but that a man 
 may swear when the Magistrate requireth, in a cause of faith and 
 charity, so it be done according to the Prophet's teaching, injustice, 
 judgment, and truth." 
 
 The counter position of the Friends has been tersely expressed 
 by Robert Barclay in these terms : — 
 
 " It is not lawful for Christians to swear at all under the Gospel, 
 not only not vainly, and in their common discourse, which was also 
 forbidden under the Mosaical law, but even not in judgment before 
 the Magistrate."* 
 
 In support of this position the Friends made sacrifices, the 
 magnitude of which is often forgotten. I should like to recall 
 two or three instances. 
 
 Francis Howgill, of Grayrigg, Westmorland, bom 1618, was a 
 minister of great power who, in company with Edward Burrough 
 in 1654, preached in London, with great success, those spiritual 
 views of Christian truth which had become precious to him. In 
 
 * Apology, prop, xv., sect. 5. 
 
FRIENDS IN THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF ENGLAND. I99 
 
 1663, when engaged upon his ordinary business in Kendal 
 market, Howgill was arrested and haled before a magistrate 
 then sitting at a tavern, who directed him to take the oath of 
 allegiance and supremacy. Howgill refused to swear, but 
 repeatedly stated that he was a loyal and peaceable man. For 
 this refusal to swear he was kept five and a half years in Appleby 
 gaol, suffering many cruelties, till death released him from his 
 gaolers in the last days of 1668. 
 
 In 1680, Thomas Hymans, of Bridgwater, appeared at the 
 Gloucester Assizes to give evidence against two highwaymen 
 who had robbed him of ^x'] 15s. The usual oath was tendered 
 him, which he refused, urging that Christ had forbidden all 
 swearing, but saying that he would give his evidence truthfully 
 " as in the presence of God." In consequence he was himself 
 committed to prison and fined, instead of the thieves who had 
 robbed him. 
 
 A similar case was that of Henry Hodges, of Reading, a 
 poor blacksmith who had three cows stolen, as was proved by 
 the evidence of his neighbours, whilst Hodges himself, for refusing 
 to give evidence on oath, was fined and imprisoned. 
 
 These are but three instances out of hundreds of a similar 
 character, which occurred during the reigns of Chcirles II. and 
 James II. The Friends steadily urged, throughout these years 
 of persecution, that they should be allowed to affirm in place of 
 swearing, and suffer aU the penalties attaching to perjury if their 
 afi&rmation were not true. In his famous discourse on The Liberty 
 of Prophesying, Jeremy Taylor had written against allowing an 
 exemption from swearing to tender consciences.* Fox, on the 
 other hand, argued that persons precluded by their consciences 
 from swearing would be found to give truthful evidence, and that 
 the State would in consequence reap the benefit. Experience 
 has remarkably vindicated this opinion. For more than two 
 hundred years the penalties attaching to false affirmation have 
 been the same as those for perjury. After making careful inquiry 
 in this country and in the United States, I have been unable to 
 * Jeremy Taylor's Works, viii., 212. 
 
200 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTEEE. 
 
 discover that any person has ever been convicted of making a 
 false affirmation. 
 
 The Toleration Act of 1689 conferred upon Friends the great 
 boon of being allowed to affirm in many cases where an oath had 
 previously been necessary. The twelfth clause of this Act ran : — 
 
 " Whereas there are certain persons who 
 
 scruple the taking of an oath every such person 
 
 shall make and subscribe this declaration of fidelity, following : 
 
 " ' I, A. B., do sincerely promise and solemnly declare before God 
 and the world that I will be true and faithful to King William and 
 Queen Mary.' " 
 
 Fox, who had suffered his longest imprisonment, that in 
 Lancaster and Scarborough Castles, 1663-66, for refusing to swear, 
 lived two years after the passing of the Toleration Act ; and the 
 evening of his life was brightened by seeing the prisons almost 
 emptied of Friends. It became apparent, however, in a little 
 while, that their trouble in connection with oaths was not ended. 
 Some of their number scrupled to use the affirmation ; the words 
 " before God " being those they stumbled at. It was said that 
 this clause virtually made the affirmation into an oath. But 
 the majority of the Friends did not so construe it. Penn, 
 Whitehead, Margaret Fox, and others held that it was but a solemn 
 declaration. But there were good and earnest men who thought 
 differently, and who showed the reality of their scruples by 
 remaining in prison for years rather than avail themselves of 
 the privilege approved by the maj ority of their brethren. William 
 Richardson, of Ayton, in North Yorkshire, allowed himself to be 
 fined, tOl one-third of his little property was sacrificed, because 
 he scrupled to take the affirmation in excise transactions, required 
 in his business of a tanner. The strife occasioned by this difference 
 of opinion respecting the affirmation became vehement between 
 the two groups of Friends. About the time when George I. came 
 to the English throne, it seemed as if the Society might be rent 
 in twain in consequence. Ultimately a legislative enactment, 
 obtained in 1722, expunging the words, " in the presence of God " 
 from the Friends' affirmation, closed the controversy. It is 
 
FRIENDS IN THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF ENGLAND. 201 
 
 significant as showing how good and conscientious men, having 
 the same end in view, may differ as to the means of attaining it, 
 and how wise it is for such to cultivate a forbearing and tolerant 
 spirit. The real issue in this controversy was — what is an oath ? 
 What is it to swear ? Swearing is not merely using strong 
 language or foolish language, or even idle words. " An oath 
 may be defined," says the Encyclopedia Britannica, " as an 
 asseveration or promise made under non-human penalty or 
 sanction." Milton's definition, in his posthumous treatise on 
 Christian Doctrine, is more perspicuous : — " An oath is that 
 whereby we call God to witness the truth of what we say, with a 
 curse upon ourselves, either imphed or expressed, should it prove 
 false." Clearly the af&rmation, as fixed by the Toleration Act, 
 is not an oath according to this definition. The ordinary form in 
 an English Court of Justice is for the witness to be bidden to speak 
 " the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help 
 me God." The words that formerly followed, " at his holy dome," 
 are no longer spoken. The Testament is then kissed. This 
 oath really means that if the witness does not Speak truly, he 
 renounces the help or mercy of God at the final Judgment. 
 
 It was unfortunate that so soon as Friends had obtained the 
 relief from judicial oaths which they had been seeking through so 
 much suffering, they became engaged in a denominational con- 
 troversy extending over more than thirty years, as to whether 
 a form of words was or was not an oath. It diverted attention 
 from the broad issue raised by the first generation of Friends, 
 and probably had its influence in deterring their successors 
 from so pointedly maintaining the contention in favour of universal 
 truth speaking, and the abolition of all oaths. By successive 
 alterations of the law, it is now competent for any British subject, 
 entertaining a conscientious objection to swearing, to make an 
 afi&rmation instead. As a matter of practice, the number of 
 persons who do so affirm is small — ^not so many in this country, 
 I should suppose, as two centuries ago. Friends themselves 
 seem to have lost a good deal of their interest in the subject. 
 When Charles Bradlaugh was excluded from Parliament for not 
 
202 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 taking the oath, and in consequence everybody was talking 
 about swearing, an unrivalled opportunity presented itself to 
 Friends to have made known their views, and to have appealed 
 to the results of two centuries of experience, as evidencing the 
 excellent effects of speaking the truth always whilst swearing 
 never. The Yearly Meeting was asked to avail itself of the 
 opportunity thus afforded, but the speaker's voice was as that of 
 one crying in the wilderness. In the Yearly Meeting's Proceedings 
 of 1889 there is a curious illustration of the liability of a religious 
 body to look at legislature from a narrow denominational stand- 
 point, instead of from that of a wider position. The Oaths Act 
 of 1888 {51-52 Vict., ch. 46) was in reality a measure to have 
 been gladly hailed by Friends, inasmuch as it established the 
 principle that anyone who either has no religious belief, or deems 
 oath-taking to be contrary to his religious belief,* should be 
 entitled to afi&rm in all cases where an oath is required. The 
 Meeting for Sufferings briefly remarked that this Act did not 
 interfere with the privileges of Friends, f 
 
 The attitude occupied by the Society in respect to oaths 
 is a strong one, but it has failed to secure any considerable recog- 
 nition of the strength of its position. Two reasons are, I believe, 
 chiefly responsible for this : — (i) The unlawf ulness of swearing 
 has been too exclusively insisted on, i nstead of the p^ tive 
 obligation to unni^iiiI"trun?«peaSng, which would car^ witli 
 
 * The first and second clauses of the Act of 1888 are as follows : — 
 
 " (i) Every person upon objecting to being sworn, and stating, as the 
 ground of such objection, either that he has no religious belief, or that the 
 taking of an oath is contrary to his religious beUef, shall be permitted 
 to make his solemn affirmation instead of taking an oath in all places 
 and for all purposes where an oath is or shall be required by law, which 
 affirmation shall be of the same force and effect as if he had taken the 
 oath ; and if any person making such affirmation shall wilfully, falsely, 
 and corruptly affixm any matter or thing which, if deposed on oath, would 
 have amounted to wilful and corrupt perjury, he shall be liable to prose- 
 cution, indictment, sentence, and punishment in aU respects as if he had 
 committed wilful and corrupt perjury. 
 
 " (2) Every such affirmation shall be as follows : — 
 
 " ' I, A. B., do solemnly, sincerely, and truly declare and affirm,' and 
 then proceed with the words of the oath prescribed by the law, omitting 
 any words of imprecation or calling to witness." 
 
 t Extracts from the Minutes and Proceedings, 1889, 86. 
 
FRIENDS IN THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF ENGLAND. 203 
 
 it the abolition of oaths, because they become unnecessary as well 
 as^jlsciipluralT^ WhenTnenHs obtained their own exemption 
 from the obligation to swear, they lost their interest in 
 commending their practice to others. At the present time great 
 ignorance on the subject prevails. Friends themselves are often 
 not conversant with the state of the general law. Magistrates 
 and their clerks are still more ignorant, and are annoyed at the 
 delay of public business consequent upon the interruption of 
 an affirmation in the proceedings of a Court of Justice. There 
 is in reality no reason why an affirmation should occupy an 
 appreciably longer time than an oath, but affirmations are so 
 infrequent that the order of procedure is often unknown. The 
 literature of Friends on this topic needs strengthening. It 
 does not avail much to talk about " our ancient testimony against 
 oaths." A testimony signifies a witnessing. The object of wit- 
 nessing is to secure the acceptance of that to which witness is 
 borne. If a person or a community accounts some truth to be 
 precious, and recognises an obligation to bear witness thereto, 
 the necesscuy measures for making that witnessing effective 
 cannot be neglected with impunity. 
 
 The instances which have been given of the sufferings of 
 Friends for refusing to take judicial oaths will illustrate their 
 whole attitude towards the question of Religious Liberty. Liberty 
 of conscience was pleaded for with great ability by Penn, Barclay, 
 and other writers in the second half of the seventeenth century. 
 But in the first instance the attitude taken up by the Friends 
 was a very simple one. Spiritual nearness to God, a nd inter course . 
 with Him, demande djto its coj]JJauaaca..£feed i£^ to His will : _ 
 keeping His comman^iwas the primary condition of walking in 
 the light; hence whenever human law seemed to conflict with 
 the Divine requirements, the hxmian law was disregarded. The 
 position of Fox and his comrades was that of Peter and John 
 before the Sanhedrin, " Whether it be right in the sight of God 
 to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye." The 
 duty of unquestioning obedience to the Divine law, as superior 
 to human law, was maintained with absolute conviction of its 
 
204 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 sacred obligation, and the most intrepid willingness to accept 
 whatever consequences such maintenance might involve. The 
 world has not yet realised how much the religious freedom of the 
 English speaking people is due to the stand made for liberty of 
 conscience by the Friends, firstly against the Presbyterians in 
 Great Britain and in New England, and afterwards against the 
 Anglican Church after the Restoration — " those days," as 
 Macaulay says, " never to be recalled without a blush, when the 
 principles of liberty were the scoff of every grinning courtier, 
 and the Anathema Maranatha of every fawning dean." When 
 Charles II. came to the throne in 1660, " only the Independents," 
 says Green, " and a few despised sects, such as the Quakers, 
 upheld the right of every man to worship God according to the 
 bidding of his own conscience." Thirty years later, with the 
 almost unanimous assent of Parliament, religious toleration 
 was granted to nearly all Protestant Nonconformists. What 
 had brought about this great change in British public opinion, 
 and that, too, just at the time when the Revocation of the Edict 
 of Nantes was extinguishing liberty of conscience in France? 
 The plea for liberty of conscience was not urged for the first 
 time in the reign of Charles II. This had been eloquently done 
 by Sir Thomas More ; but very little advance had been made 
 in the acceptance of the principle, in the century and a quarter 
 intervening between the publication of the Utopia and that of 
 Milton's treatise on Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes, showing 
 that it is not lawful for any power on earth to compel in matters 
 of religion (1659). Oliver Cromwell was undoubtedly strongly 
 adverse to religious persecution ; and this was one reason why 
 he was detested by the Presbyterian clergy, whose printed works 
 remain to show how little they were in advance of Bonner or Laud 
 in recognising the rights of conscience. They were earnest for the 
 enforcement, by the civil power, of Presbyterian uniformity.* 
 Hardly any of our front rank historians have done adequate 
 justice to the Nonconformist stand for religious freedom in the 
 
 * In Gardiner's lectures on Cromwell's Place in History, there is a 
 discriminating discussion of the attitude of Cromwell, Milton, and the 
 
FRIENDS IN THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF ENGLAND. 205 
 
 reign of Charles II. In that stand the Friends bore the brant 
 of the conflict. Burnet, an unsympathetic contemporary writer, 
 says : — 
 
 " The behaviour of the Quakers was more particular, and had 
 something in it that looked bold. They met at the same place and 
 at the same hour as before. And when they were seized, none of 
 them would get out of the way. They went altogether to prison ; 
 they staid there till they were dismissed, for they would not petition 
 to be set at liberty, nor would they pay their fines set on them, nor 
 so much as the jail fees, calling these wages of unrighteousness. 
 And as soon as they were let out, they went to their meeting-houses 
 again ; and when they found these were shut up by order, they held 
 their meetings in the streets, before the doors of those houses. They 
 said, they would not disown or be ashamed of their meeting together 
 to worship God ; but, in imitation of Daniel, they would do it the 
 more publicly, because they were forbidden the doing it. Some 
 called this obstinacy, while others called it firmness ; but by it they 
 carried their point : for the government grew weary of dealing with 
 so much perverseness, and so began to let them alone." 
 
 Professor Masson, the biographer of Milton, has brought out 
 very strikingly the power of the Friends' passive resistance to 
 persecution. I do not find that the passage is well known, and 
 should like to quote it : — 
 
 " Most of the Presbyterian ministers and many of the Indepen- 
 dent and Baptist preachers tried to avoid conflict with the law by 
 arrangements for preaching among their adherents from house to 
 house, with never more than four persons present in addition to the 
 family ; but even these might blunder or be trepanned. Others 
 broke bounds defiantly and took the consequences. Such offenders 
 were numerous among the Baptists ; but no denomination so 
 amazed and perplexed the authorities by their obstinacy as the 
 Quakers. It was their boast that their worship, from its 
 very nature, could not be stopped ' by men or devils.' From 
 
 Independents towards religious liberty, followed by this allusion to the 
 Society of Friends : — 
 
 " It is significant that the one important religious body which originated 
 in the seventeenth century — ^that of the Society of Friends — owed its 
 strength on the one hand to that extreme individuaUsm which marks 
 its doctrine as the quintessence of the higher Puritanism, but on the other 
 hand to its unshrinking opposition to the Calvinistic discij)line and the 
 Calvinistic doctrine. No wonder Cromwell was drawn to its founder." 
 
 t History of His Own Times, p. 184. 
 
206 JOHN STEPHENSON EOWNTREE. 
 
 a meeting of Roman Catholics, they said, you have but to take away 
 the mass-book or the chalice, or the priest's garment, or even but to 
 spill the water and blow out the candles, and the meeting is over. 
 So, in a meeting of Lutherans or Episcopalians, or in a meeting of Pres- 
 byterians, or Independents, or Baptists, or Socinians, there is always 
 some implement or set of implements upon which all depends, be it 
 in the liturgy, the gown or surplice, the Bible, or the hour-glass ; 
 remove these and make noise enough and there can be no service. 
 Not so with a Quaker meeting. There men and women worship with 
 their hearts without implements, in silence as well as by speech. 
 You may break in upon them, hoot at them, roar at them, drag them 
 about ; the meeting, if it is of any size, essentially still goes on till all 
 the component individuals are murdered. Throw them out of the 
 doors in twos and threes, and they but re-enter at the window and 
 quietly resume their places. Pull their meeting-house down, and 
 they re-assemble next day most punctually amid the broken walls 
 and rafters. Shovel sand or earth down upon them, and there they 
 still sit, a sight to see, musing immovably among the rubbish. This 
 is no description from fancy ; it was the actual practice of the Quakers 
 all over the country. They held their meetings regularly, persever- 
 ingly, and without the least concealment, keeping the doors of their 
 meeting-houses purposely open that all might enter, informers, 
 constables, or soldiers, and do whatever they chose. In fact, the 
 Quakers behaved magnificently. By their peculiar method of open 
 violation of the law and passive resistance only they rendered a ser- 
 vice to the common cause of all the Nonconformist sects which has 
 never been sufficiently acknowledged. The authorities had begun 
 to fear them as a kind of supernatural folk, and knew not what to 
 do with them but cram them into. gaols and let them lie there. Indeed 
 the gaols in those days were less places of punishment for criminals 
 than receptacles for a great proportion of what was bravest and most 
 excellent in the manhood and womanhood of England."* 
 
 There can be no wonder that this meek endurance of cruel 
 oppression for conscience sake wrought a great change in public 
 sentiment, in the direction of toleration. Hallam attributes much 
 to the influence of Jeremy Taylor's Liberty of Prophesying. But 
 why should that book have succeeded where Utopia had failed ? 
 The 12,316 Friends imprisoned in Charles II's. reign, including 
 the 321 who died in prison, were an object lesson to the English 
 people far more cogent than any book ; and Jeremy Taylor's 
 * Masson's Milton, vi., 587-8. 
 
FRIENDS IN THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF ENGLAND. 207 
 
 views on behalf of religious liberty were very imperfect, as we 
 have already seen. 
 
 Whilst the poets have associated peculiarities in speech 
 with the Friends, statesmen have fastened upon the love of 
 freedom as their prominent trait. On the death of William 
 Edward Forster, Mr. Gladstone, then the Prime Minister, speaking 
 in the House of Commons, said : — 
 
 " Although Mr. Forster had ceased to be a member of the Society 
 of Friends, he cherished throughout his life that hearty love of 
 freedom which has always been a marked characteristic of that 
 Society." 
 
 The late Professor Huxley wrote : — 
 
 " George Fox went through persecutions as serious as those which 
 Paul enumerates : he was beaten, stoned, cast out for dead, imprisoned 
 nine times, sometimes for long periods, in perils on land and perUs at 
 sea. A few years after Fox began to preach there were reckoned 
 to be a thousand Friends in prison in the various gaols in England ; 
 at his death, less than fifty years after the foundation of the sect, 
 there were 70,000 of them in the United Kingdom. The cheerfulness 
 with which these people — women as well as men — underwent martyr- 
 dom in this country and in the New England States is one of the 
 most remarkable facts in the history of religion."* 
 
 If the retrospect of the attitude of Friends towards human 
 speech is disappointing, that of their service on behalf of religious 
 liberty is rich in its noble memories and its peaceful triumphs. 
 The service they have accomplished in this field is of priceless 
 value. It has, however, been marked by some of the same features 
 observable in other departments of the Society's work. In the 
 matter of oaths we have seen that after the Toleration Act had 
 conferred upon Friends the privilege of aflfirming, they became 
 less zealous in objecting to swearing because i t was a harmful 
 custom — ^not for Friends only — ^but for any one. Content with 
 their own exemption, th^'"aKiosFcease3topr§§s upon others 
 the duty and advantage of the avoidance of oath-taking. Scien- 
 tific observers speak of the law by which organisms exhibit 
 a tendency to degenerate when, in the struggle for existence, 
 * Nineteenth Century, 1889, 451, 452. 
 
208 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 they have secured a surrounding which releases them from the 
 necessity of constant conflict. A similar law obviously obtains 
 in the spiritual world. Trench expressed it in non-scientific 
 terms when he wrote : — 
 
 " For we must share, if we would keep, 
 That good thing from above; 
 Ceasing to give, we cease to have — 
 Such is the law of Love." 
 
 The Society of Friends has happUy never lost its interest in the 
 cause of religious freedom. Within the lifetime of the present 
 generation it has sent its ambassadors to plead for this liberty 
 before kings and emperors. There was, however, a marked 
 slackening of zeal after the passing of the Toleration Act ; more 
 anxiety was displayed to preserve denominational privileges 
 than to promote the larger acceptance of the principle of religious 
 hberty on the national statute book. The past seventy years 
 must always be memorable for the extension of religious liberty 
 in this country. The removal of the Roman Catholic disabilities, 
 the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, the Marriage and 
 Registration Act of 1836, the establishment of London University, 
 the subsequent removal of tests at the older Universities, the 
 admission of Friends to Parliament, and subsequently of Jews, 
 the establishment of religious equality in Ireland, the abohtion 
 of compulsory church-rates, the Burials Act of 1880, and those 
 successive alterations in the laws affecting oaths already referred 
 to, cannot, however, be attributed in any special degree to the 
 labours of Friends. Their passive enumeration of their sufferings, 
 as they were collected and tabulated year by year, needed more 
 active and aggressive action to make their testimony-bearing 
 fruitful in definite result. For the reforms mentioned we have 
 to thank Edward Miall and the Liberation Society. 
 
 Edmund Burke's great saying, " Eternal vip^i;iT^r,<;^ is the 
 grice^ofJibMi^' should never be forgotten. If Friends are to 
 be true to the great traditions they inherit in the matter of 
 religious freedom, and to retain any right to leadership on its 
 behalf in English society, they must be increasingly strenuous 
 
FRIENDS IN THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF ENGLAND. 209 
 
 in maintaining the doctrine of religious equality through evil as 
 well as through good report. The struggle to prevent the public 
 schools from falling under the domination of the priest should 
 enlist their more active sjnnpathies. Here in Yorkshire there are 
 more than 500 parishes in which Nonconformist children are 
 forced into the Church schools, and in which Nonconformists are 
 excluded from the profession of teaching in the elementary 
 schools, except at the sacrifice of their religious convictions.* In 
 the nursing profession, too, great hindrances to advancement are 
 put in the way of Protestant Nonconformists through the 
 influence of the Established Church, even in institutions which 
 have been largely supported by the contributions of Friends. 
 
 Met together at Scarborough, where so many good men have 
 suffered through their loyalty to conscience, it cannot be inoppor- 
 tune to revive our recollections of what, under God, we owe to 
 them, and to review the responsibilities, as well as the privileges, 
 which constitute a part of our sacred heritage. 
 
 III. 
 
 The Present Position of Friends in English Society : their 
 Attitude towards Philanthropy. 
 
 In contrasting the positions occupied by Friends at the end 
 of the seventeenth and of the nineteenth centuries respectively, 
 one is impressed with the magnitude of the change. At the earlier 
 period the rapid growth of the Society, its missionary zeal at 
 home and abroad, and its aggressive attitude towards existing 
 ecclesiastical systems had excited wide-spread alarm. Charles 
 Leslie's abusive book, The Snake in the Grass, reflects that alarm, 
 and expresses the impatience with which the Toleration Act was 
 regarded by the High Anglican party. At the present time 
 ifi?]£rance^affdJndjffe£EOce_respecting its faith and polity are the 
 rnost notable features in the popular attitude towards the Society. 
 
 * It will be remembered that this was written in 1897. — [Editor.] 
 
 15 
 
210 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 The alarm formerly felt has passed. A stranger asking his way 
 to a Friends' meeting house may not improbably be told, even 
 by a poUceman, that he has never heard of such a place. The 
 popular notion amongst those who do know something of the 
 Friends is that they are a picturesque survival of an earlier period, 
 serviceable in subscribiag to benevolent objects, and not usually 
 troublesome. They are regarded as desirable candidates at a 
 municipal or parliamentary election. In localities where any 
 considerable body of Friends reside, they are looked to by the 
 public as leaders in philanthropic enterprises ; a great deal of 
 sentiment within the Society itself quietly asserts itself in the 
 same direction. The Yearly Meeting will deal shyly with 
 questions involving principles of ecclesiastical action, or even 
 with proposed changes in its procedure that disturb existing 
 arrangements, but it habitually recovers its spirits when direct- 
 ing a new subscription to alleviate human suffering caused by 
 famine, persecution, or war. Dean Stanley thought the main 
 object for the continued existence of Friends was to labour for 
 the abolition of war. Canon Curteis says virtually the same 
 thing — " They have all but put down slavery ; they are on their 
 way, I hope, to put down wan"* This in itself is a large field of 
 labour — of which more presently. 
 
 Respecting the philanthropic labours of Friends, Marsden, a 
 Church of England clergyman, says : — 
 
 " Their zeal in works of practical benevolence knows no decay. 
 In this their small community stands unrivalled, almost unap- 
 proached. If the opinions of their leaders should seem to disparage 
 the sacred volume, their followers, with a happy inconsistency, are 
 the zealous and unwearied advocates of its diffusion through the 
 world. In them the Bible Society has always met with its most 
 staunch supporters. Without their powerful assistance, Wilberforce 
 would have declaimed in vain on the horrors of the middle passage, 
 and Sir FoweU Buxton, himself of Quaker blood, on the aboUtion 
 of slavery. Quakers are not a boastful people, or they might chal- 
 lenge contradiction to the fact that no considerable movement has 
 taken place during the last half century, on behalf of the poor, the 
 abject, or the guUty, which did not either originate with themselves. 
 
 * Dissent, 255. 
 
FRIENDS IN THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF ENGLAND. 211 
 
 or from them at least receive the impulse which gave it popularity, 
 and crowned it with success. Mrs. Fry carried out that reformation 
 of our prisons which Howard had begun. To Allen we are indebted 
 for beihg amongst the first to arouse the country on the subject 
 of national education. Reynolds, of Bristol, taught us the system- 
 atic visitation of the poor. In short, wherever a Quaker com- 
 munity exists, it is the centre of philanthropy and the example of 
 the surrounding district."* 
 
 The philanthropic zeal here described dates from the latter 
 part of the eighteenth century, and arose from two principal 
 causes : (i) the growing disapproval of slavery under the teaching 
 of Woolman and others ; {2) the quickening of spiritual life 
 consequent upon the evangelical revival both in the Established 
 and the Nonconformist Churches. The same people who toiled 
 for the emancipation of the slave supported Dr. Fothergill's 
 educational work at Ackworth and William Tuke's amelioration 
 of the lot of the insane at York. Philanthropy was in no wise 
 foreign to the original ideas of the Friends, but it ran on different 
 lines in the eighteenth century from what it had done in the 
 seventeenth. In the earlier period there was great solicitude on 
 behalf of the poor : it was wished that the wages of labourers 
 should be fairly fixed, that the country's prisons might be made 
 less dreadful places than they were, that criminals should be 
 classified, that laws might be few and simple, that the services of 
 lawyers might be dispensed with, as well as those of priests, that 
 men might cease to light, and to interfere with conscience in the 
 things of God. The first hope of Fox appears to have been a 
 reform of the whole Christian Church, which should secure these 
 practical betterments in the lot of the common people, and when 
 this proved impracticable, then the forma,tion of a community 
 which should express these principles in its corporate life. 
 
 Extremely interesting were the efforts made by the early 
 Friends to help one another, as members of a. great family. The 
 ancient minutes of Monthly Meetings, besides the constant 
 references to the care of the prisoners, record such items as the 
 lendkig of money to poor persons beginning business, the purchase 
 . ; * Marsden's History of Christian Churches and Sects, i., 455, 456. 
 
212 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 of a COW for a widow woman, the caring for orphan children, 
 the helping of families to emigrate. When the philanthropic 
 zeal of the eighteenth century sprang up, it largely travelled 
 into organisations outside the pale of the Society of Friends, in 
 which its members united with persons of different persuasions, 
 for the attainment of a desired end. The British and Foreign 
 Anti-Slavery Society, the British and Foreign Bible Society, the 
 British and Foreign School Society, temperance and total 
 abstinence societies, the Peace Society, hospitals, dispensaries, 
 at once occur as illustrations. 
 
 If we compare the lives of George Fox, Margaret Fell and 
 William Penn with those of Joseph J. Gumey, Elizabeth Fry and 
 William Allen, it wiU be seen that whilst their ideals had very 
 much in common, there was a wide difference in their methods of 
 working out those ideals. This does not necessarily reflect upon 
 either group of workers. Both accomplished very beneficent 
 work. The world has heartily recognised the philanthropy of 
 Elizabeth Fry, and given her an honoured place amongst the 
 saints of British Christianity. The Society of Friends, as a 
 conununity, has largely profited by the evangelical glow introduced 
 into its ministry and teaching in connection with the philanthropic 
 labours of its members. The First-day School movement was 
 closely associated, both in its origin and its progress, with the 
 same influences which had called forth so much self-sacrificing 
 labour on behalf of the slave, the criminal, and the ignorant. The 
 Friends of eighty years ago provided a large number of labourers, 
 especially of women, in these fields of altruistic service, possessing 
 aptitude for associated work with persons of other denominations, 
 and not exciting any apprehensions of proselytism. These labours 
 enlarged the outlook of the Society, which had become greatly 
 contracted, and expanded the sympathies of its members. 
 
 There is, however, another side to the picture. It is in con- 
 nection with their philanthropy that Friends have won much 
 public approbation. Christ said, " Woe unto you, when all men 
 shall speak well of you 1 for in the same manner did their fathers 
 to the false prophets." The Society has not by any means entirely 
 
FRIENDS IN THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF ENGLAND. 213 
 
 escaped this woe. Why is human praise dangerous to individuals 
 or to a community ? Because praise is pleasant, has a tendency 
 to exalt self, to lead into paths which may bring more praise, and 
 to relax the texture of moral and religious character. A special 
 danger in the case before us has been this, that philanthropic 
 work as commonly carried on requires much money. It often 
 seems as if God's work was hindered for want of silver and gold. 
 " Why not then acquire more," reasons the philanthropist, " so as 
 to be able to give more largely ? " Hence, in some cases at least, 
 has come the self-justification for going on acquiring, hoarding 
 earthly treasure whilst zeal was slackening, and character 
 deca3dng. The late Frederick D. Maurice made it a charge against 
 Friends that they have continued testifying about things which 
 may have required such testimony two centuries ago, but which 
 are now largely matters of tradition, whilst they have been almost 
 silent on those which most need testifying against in the 
 nineteenth century — the excessive love and worship of wealtl^^ 
 and the de v yti^on toJI'^^fflffl^iSoq^,, There is some force in this 
 charge ; whilst it is no less true that Friends are amongst the 
 few people periodically exhorted to " take heed to the limitations 
 of the Spirit of Truth in the pursuit of the things of this life," 
 and to " Guard against the spirit of speculation, and the snare 
 of accumulating wealth."* 
 
 Whilst both within and without the Society a sentiment 
 has prevailed that its proper and most successful work has been 
 philanthropy, it has not been so conraionly perceived that this 
 philanthropy is not a sentimental outcome of human kindliness, 
 but is intimately connected with a perception of the spiritual 
 and all embracing character of the kingdom of Christ — a kingdom 
 of righteousness, peace and joy. The basis of a world-wide 
 philanthropy is removed if it be not true that Christ " tasted 
 death for every man," and that He " lighteth every man that 
 Cometh into the world." One of the foremost lessons taught by 
 the history of Friends is the close connection between everything 
 which has been distinctive in their conduct and the recognition 
 * Christian Discipline, ii., 38. 
 
214 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 of God's nearness to every human spirit which will receive and 
 obey Him. In the light of this principle, let us revert to that 
 which so many persons think the chief work of Friends at the 
 present time — ^labour for international peace and the abolition of 
 war. When Fox was asked at Derby to take the command of a 
 troop of soldiers, he replied, that he " lived in the virtue of that 
 life and power that took away the occasion of all wars."* 
 Tennyson inquired : — 
 
 " Ah ! when shall all men's good 
 Be each man's rule, and universal peace 
 Lie like a shaft of light across the land. 
 And hke a lane of beams athwart the sea. 
 Thro' all the circle of the golden year ?" 
 
 The answer is clear — ^just so soon as men shall come prac- 
 tically under the government of Christ by His Spirit, so removing 
 the occasions of war, and manifesting the contrariety between 
 the spirit of strife and that of love. To make this perception 
 vivid, the human conscience requires educating and instructing. 
 Hence the wide sphere for the labours of individuals and of 
 associations, definitely working for the advancement of inter- 
 national peace. " Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall 
 be called the sons of God." We believe, however, that it is not 
 practicable efficiently to advance this great reform if it bT~ 
 regaj3ed as^iirisoIa.ted piece of social amelidfaiion, which c an De"~ 
 detached from ttie whole body oflltuistian Taa th and" pirac tice. 
 
 This is true as respects otiier*3epaSffiSts of conduct. Jiishop 
 Westcott so well expressed the thought I wish to enforce, that I 
 should like to quote words of his which succeed a decided 
 condemnation of some parts of George Fox's teaching — " None 
 the less, he [Fox] established one fundamental fact, which is of 
 momentous importance for us in our present endeavours to 
 bring before the world the majesty of the kingdom of God. He 
 made clear beyond question the power of the simplest spiritual 
 appeal to the conscience of men. He made clear beyond question 
 the efficacy of a childlike trust in the reality of a divine fellowship 
 
 * Journal, L, 68. 
 
U>VI<i>H'W*^ 
 
 FRIENDS IN THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF ENGLAND. 215 
 
 to cleanse the rudest and coarsest life. For he did not labour 
 
 towards the accomplishment of any special work of mercy or 
 
 justice. He strove simply for the recognition of a living Christ 
 
 withm e_y.gry ^tjtji,;^.-^e wrought for God m the conviction that 
 
 the new life is the consequence and not the condition of the 
 
 quickened Faith ; that righteousness, peace, joy, are the notes of 
 
 the believer, but not the pre-requisites for believing. We are 
 
 busied, engrossed, absorbed, in dealing with partial evils — ^with 
 
 intemperance, with uncleanness, with dishonesty. We think 
 
 that we can build up the kingdom of God in fragments ; that some 
 
 breath from heaven will at last animate the frame which we have 
 
 painfuUy fashioned bit by bit. But there is, as far as I can see, 
 
 little encouragement for such a reversal of the processes of nature, 
 
 for such a denial of the teaching of history. The fnncii)le of life_ 
 
 f^^ions th&.J3Z£atti^s;fn^and sustains it. No organism, however 
 
 delicately constructed, can summon to itself the principle of life ; 
 
 no scheme of social regeneration has ever shewn a power of 
 
 continuance which has not been based upon religious faith. No 
 
 scheme which has retained its first faith has ever wholly failed."* 
 
 I cannot then concur in the opinion that the main place for 
 
 Friends in English Society is now to furnish a body of benevolently 
 
 disposed persons, concerned in the philanthropic work of the 
 
 nation, whilst declining more strenuous issues. Rather I should 
 
 say that their great contribution to the national life consists in 
 
 keeping before it a presentation of Christianity — at once spiritual, 
 
 ethical, and practical in influencing conduct. Through seven 
 
 generations the Society has been successful in rearing men and 
 
 women different — ^not necessarily better — but different in some 
 
 respects from those of any other denomination. This difference, 
 
 as we have seen, was recognised by the Protector, when his Court 
 
 was thronged by Friends asking permission to go to prison in 
 
 place of the sufferers immured there. From that time to the 
 
 present a signal success has been attained by the Society in 
 
 moulding individual characters, powerful for dealing with the 
 
 ordinary affairs of life in a Christian spirit. Seventy years ago 
 
 * Social Aspects of Christianity, 132, 133. 
 
2l6 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 Sydney Smith, the brilliant Edinburgh Review writer, came into 
 my father's office and asked him to provide a Quaker nursemaid 
 for the rectory at Foston : her faith should in no way be interfered 
 with while resident in a clergjmaan's family. I believe the want 
 could not be supplied ; but it gave rise to a conversation in which 
 the witty essayist said, " You obtain something which we do not " 
 — as the reason for his singular request. The incident is 
 significant in its recognition of the dependability of character 
 that has often grown up under a training associated with the 
 doctrine of the Divine indwelling. It is this sense of personal 
 responsibility which has given to the Friends their great influence. 
 Whilst, however, they have been so successful in fashioning 
 individual characters, able to take their part worthily in many of 
 the walks of life, the Society's failure in sustaining congregational 
 life on a large scale has been no less conspicuous. For a hundred 
 and eighty years after the colonisation of Pennsylvania the 
 diminution in numerical strength in Great Britain cannot have 
 averaged less than 200 persons per annum, whilst in the same 
 period the population increased five-fold. It is this failure which 
 makes one hesitate to offer an opinion whether the Society can 
 still contribute to our national life an element, the past value 
 of which is widely recognised — and the need for which stiU 
 continues. May I give a single illustration of this need ? I 
 hope the majority of Friends here, if hot all, agree with me in 
 condemning the recent conduct of Great Britain towards the 
 natives of South Africa as deplorably heathenish. To steal their 
 country, debauch them with vile spirits, when they resist to call 
 them rebels, to mow down " the niggers " with Maxim guns, 
 and finally give sites of stolen land for mission stations — ^was a 
 policy as despicable as it was wicked. What was at the root of 
 this policy ? It was the love of money over-riding considerations 
 of justice and of humanity and of honesty. And what is the 
 remedy for such a policy ? To find a power which will be stronger 
 than the love of money, one which will strengthen the sense of 
 justice and quicken personal responsibility. Where can this 
 power be found, but in the sense of the nearness of God to the 
 
FRIENDS IN THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF ENGLAND. 217 
 
 human spirit — and in its submission to the government of 
 Christ ? 
 
 " So near is grandeur to our dust, 
 
 So nigh to God is man, 
 When duty whispers low, ' Thou must ' — 
 
 The soul replies, ' I can.' " 
 
 If this sense could be brought home to men on a suf&ciently 
 large scale, there would be far less worship of mammon, a greater 
 love of simplicity in life, a finer sense of justice, a recognition of 
 the dignity of men everywhere, whatever the colour of their 
 skins and however degraded, since they are yet the objects 
 with ourselves of a common redemption through Christ, and 
 of a universal illumination by His Spirit. This presentation 
 of Christianity needs enforcing on our legislators, and not less so 
 upon those who emigrate from Great Britain to people new 
 countries. 
 
 Within the lifetime of the present generation, two men have 
 been eminently successful in obtaining the ear of the English- 
 speaking peoples for a practical and ethical view of Christianity, 
 substantially the same as that presented two centuries and a 
 half ago by Fox, Barclay and Penn. The responses evoked by 
 the speeches of Bright and the poetry of Whittier indicate that 
 the truths they enunciated, even when unpopular at the time, 
 reached the Divine witness in the hearts of thousands. Along 
 with marked differences, there are points of notable similarity 
 between the religious atmosphere of the present day and that of 
 the Conmionwealth times. There was a widely spread interest in 
 religion ; so there is now. There was then a great exhibition 
 of religiousness ; and so there is now. Then it took the form of 
 Sabbath observance, and all that extemalism of dress, speech 
 and conduct which characterised the later Puritanism. Now 
 religiousness takes the form of aesthetic and sacerdotal ritual. 
 In the seventeenth century many souls remained unsatisfied. 
 There are indications that a similar sense of unsatisfiedness exists 
 now. Alongside the ritualistic wave flows the current of 
 agnosticism. " There be many who say, ' who will show us any 
 
2l8 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTEEE. 
 
 good ? ' " Is any certain knowledge to be had of the existence 
 of a spiritual world and, if existing, of its laws ? Many members 
 of the Scarborough Summer School must often have longed that 
 it were in their power to give a satisfying answer to souls hunger- 
 ing for something deeper than ritual, and more restful than 
 incertitude. I can offer no opinion whether the Friends wUl 
 have the spiritual strength to supply this void in the religious 
 life of our times. " This sort goeth not forth but by prayer and 
 fasting." "Jesus saith, 'Except ye fast to the world, ye shall in 
 no wise find the kingdom of God ; and except ye keep the sabbath, 
 ye shall not see the Father.' "* Were we able to set forth the 
 claims of the spiritual kingdom of Christ, by example as well as 
 by speech, plainly, persuasively, and yet in the power of truth, 
 commending the message to every man's conscience in the sight 
 of God, it would carry with it the savour of its own authority ; 
 and our own people, and the world, and the Church would all feel 
 that the message was not the dying echo of seventeenth century 
 voices, but a veritable Gospel, living, dynamic, catholic — 
 impartially addressing itself to all sorts and conditions of men, 
 whether young or old, rich or poor, learned or unlearned, agnostic 
 or ritualist. 
 
 Logion ii. 
 
PART II. 
 PROBLEMS OF CHURCH LIFE. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE RELATIONS OF DENOMINATIONAL TO NATIONAL 
 
 LIFE: 
 
 With Especial Reference to their Influence on the Polity 
 OF THE Society of Friends.* 
 
 According to Whittier, we who are Friends, 
 
 " . . . of all others, have reason to pay 
 The tribute of thanks, and rejoice on our way, 
 
 . . . for the faith which embraces the whole, 
 Of the creeds of the ages the Ufe and the soul, 
 Wherein letter and spirit the same channel run. 
 And man has not severed what God has made one ! 
 
 For a sense of the Goodness revealed everywhere, 
 
 As sunshine impartial, and free as the air ; 
 
 For a trust in humanity. Heathen or Jew, 
 
 And a hope for all darkness the Light shineth through." f 
 
 TT is remarkable that a Society holding a faith so catholic, 
 possessing points of contact with so many systems of 
 philosophy and religion, should in the course of a century and a 
 half have become one of the most elaborately organised and 
 self-contained amongst the tribes of the Christian common- 
 wealth. To trace the causes and growth of this development 
 would furnish material for an excellent essay in ecclesiastical 
 history. It was an outcome little anticipated by the first 
 generation who bore the name of Friends, or by their contem- 
 
 • A paper read at a Yorkshire Quarterly Meeting Conference, York, 
 1892. 
 
 t The Quaker Alumni. 
 
222 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 poraries of other persuasions. Yet even before the death of 
 George Fox close observers might have discerned a slackening 
 in the vigour of that assault on existing religious institutions and 
 creeds which had distinguished the Friends of the Commonwealth 
 and of the early years of Charles II. ; and as time passed the 
 disposition became increasingly apparent for the Society to turn 
 its energies in the direction of internal brganisation, rather than 
 towards external aggression. 
 
 By the silent growth of usage, as well as by denominatidiial 
 legislation, a system of institutions and customs was evolved 
 whj§Jn' Permitted .the Friends to live conformably with the require- 
 ments of their r^igious convictions, whilst avoiding unnecessary 
 conflict with the laws and usages of others. The first Friends, 
 " nobles by the right of an earlier creation, priests by the 
 imposition of a mightier hand,"* could not tolerate clerical 
 intervention in their domestic affairs., l)ispensing with sacer- 
 dotal assistance at birth, mafriage, and death, they erected 
 their own system of registr£j,tion, their own marriage, ceremonial, 
 and provided their own, cemeteries. The earlier years of the 
 eighteenth century witnessed the building of numerous meeting 
 houses. It was a timej^f waning .spiritual fervour, but the 
 sj^tem of Church government establi^ed by George Fox was 
 elaborated, and ecclesiastical regulations multiplifed. The latter 
 years of the century saw the establishment of the Women's 
 Ye^y .Meeting, the growth of the system of recording Ministers, 
 ?fldg,f^}iat was more important, the foimdation of Ackworth 
 ^cjjppl. T The last event was followed at no long interval. by 
 t}^ ^tablishment of a group of other schools, so that by -ihe 
 tpie of Queen Victoria's accession, a denominational education 
 v^as provided for all the children of Friends, who would a9eept 
 ^J, jand, also for those connected with the Society but not in 
 ^^ijabership. The Society had, in fact, followed the law, so 
 g^^^9.ble in the animal world, by which the living organism 
 seeks a congenial environment, and is in its turn influenced by 
 the peculiarities of that environment. 
 
 * Macaulay's description of the Puritan. — [Editor.], 
 
DENOMINATIONAL AND NATIONAL LIFE. 223 
 
 Time only permits me thus to glance in the hastiest manner 
 at a process which was progressive through five or six generations, 
 because — my object in this paper being practical and not 
 academic — I want to hasten on, and to point out the great 
 change which the last sixty years have brought about in this 
 denominational enviroiunent. Yet the significance of the 
 change can hardly be understood without noticing the causes 
 which had led up to that phase of denominational life which 
 existed in the Society of Friends when the nineteenth century 
 opened, and for many years afterwards. These causes embraced 
 within their range the influence of active persecution and of 
 religious disabilities from without, as well as phases of religious 
 thought and feeling within the body, which may have affinities 
 with spiritual sloth, as well as with mental introversion, bracing 
 self-examination, strenuous spiritual exercise, and loving loyalty 
 to Christ.* 
 
 Two books have been published within the last few years, 
 which set before the present generation both the lights and 
 shadows of that environment, which was the out-growth of a 
 hundred and fifty years of denominational life. The Records of 
 a Quaker Family, the Richardsons of Cleveland portray these with 
 a loving but not indiscriminating appreciation : the Autobio- 
 graphy of Mary Howitt, censoriously and unsympathetically. 
 
 Personally, we see much to admire in that religious and social 
 atmosphere which had been created by the lives and labours of five 
 generations of Friends. In many respects it was nobler, purer, 
 more humane, in a word more Christian, than that which encir- 
 cled the average Englishman. It had its harsh side, especially 
 in relation to marriage. It had its narrowness, under which many 
 spirits chafed, but even this promoted the formation of earnest 
 and deep character. Where this depth and earnestness were allied 
 with natural graces and spiritual gifts, characters of great beauty 
 were the result, especially amongst women. Nor need it be con- 
 
 * For reasons of space, a sketch of the " career of an individual born 
 in the Society of Friends at the beginning of the nineteenth century," 
 is omitted. His career, from the cradle to the grave, " ran alongside, 
 butyetmost definitely outside the stream of the national life." — [Editor.] 
 
224 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 ceded that this environment had its funny side. It requires 
 some self-denial, in the interests of brevity, to refrain from illus- 
 tration which might have lighted up the tedium of this discussion. 
 
 The fabric of institutions and usages of which we have spoken 
 had attained its fairest development when its continuance began 
 to be menaced by the operation of causes which had been set in 
 motion by the very men who had laid its foundations. They 
 had really done a far greater work than found a small denomina- 
 tion. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone once spoke of " the great social forces, which 
 move on in their might and majesty, undisturbed by the din " of 
 men's debate. The words recaU that slow, but really majestic 
 march of religious forces, which may be moving almost unob- 
 served through the lifetime of generations, nearly to the hour of 
 their final triumph. The Kingdom of Heaven cometh not with 
 observation. So it was with respect to those principles of religi- 
 ous freedom and the rights of conscience, to which the early 
 Friends were the most stedfast adherents, and for which they be- 
 came the most patient sufferers. The disputed succession of the 
 Hanoverian kings, and the spiritual lethargy of the first half of 
 the eighteenth century, overshadowed and in degree buried 
 these principles. An historian like Bancroft sees however that 
 the independence of the United States was the natural outcome 
 of the foundation of New England and Pennsylvania. The excesses 
 of the French Revolution turned back the progress of civil and 
 religious liberty in this country for nearly half a century, but at 
 last, after ten years of peace, it became apparent that under these 
 hindering influences the principles of religious liberty had really 
 been germioant, and were about to jdeld a beneficent harvest 
 which has not even yet been fuUy ripened and garnered. 
 
 It would be a mistake to claim for the Society of Friends an 
 exclusive possession of these principles. The other Noncon- 
 formist bodies were also their custodians, and sometimes their more 
 strenuous advocates. But it may be maintained without fear of 
 contradiction, that the greater part of the beneficent legislation 
 of the last seventy years has been in harmony with those Friendly 
 
DENOMINATIONAL AND NATIONAL LIFE. 225 
 
 teachings which in the seventeenth century often sounded as 
 the voice of one crying in the wilderness. 
 
 For one hundred and thirty-nine years after the passing of 
 the Toleration Act, in 1689, no great measure in the interests of 
 religious freedom was carried through the British legislature. 
 The causes of this striking fact deserve careful thought, but they 
 cannot be discussed here. The fact itself becomes the more notable 
 in contrast with the long series of measures of which the repeal of 
 the Test and Corporation Acts in 1828 was the harbinger. 
 
 The removal of the Roman Catholic disabilities followed in 
 1829. In 1832 the great Reform Bill was passed. The following 
 year Joseph Pease took his seat in Parliament, the first Friend 
 member. In the same year, the affirmation of Friends, Moravians, 
 and Separatists was made equivalent to an oath, as respects the 
 serving on juries, the qualification for office, and all other pur- 
 poses whatsoever. The reform in the Poor La w, a most importan t 
 measure, not entirely unconnected with the subject before us, 
 was carried in 1834. The year 1836 is especially notable as wit- 
 nessing the foundation of London University, and also the passage 
 of the Dissenters' Marriage and General Registration Acts. The 
 agitation for the repeal of the com laws occupied the public 
 mind for some succeeding years. Three men were said to form 
 the A. B. and C. of the Anti-Corn Law League. A. and B. were 
 Friends. The Liberation Society was founded in 1844. ^^ 1853 
 religious tests were abolished in the Scotch Universities. They 
 were partially removed at Oxford in 1854, and at Cambridge in 
 1856, and more decisively so in 1870. In 1866 the Qualification 
 for Office Act passed. In 1868 compulsory church-rates were 
 abolished. The next year religious equality was established in 
 Ireland. In 1880 the Burials Acts Amendment Bill became law. 
 I intended to have named in its chronological order the Elementary 
 Education Act of 1870 ; and the Local Government Act of 1889 
 may also be mentioned. 
 
 Let us look at the influence of these measures on the environ- 
 ment of a Friend. His birth, his marriage, and his death are now 
 recorded on the national registers, in the same way as those of 
 
 16 
 
226 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 the millions of his fellow-citizens. Since the midsummer of 1837 
 it has not been possible for a Friend to be bom, to be married, 
 or to die, without the State making a note of the event. Since 
 1880 it has been possible for a Friend to be buried in the national 
 church-yards.* As the State has not ignored him during 
 life, it does not deny him sepulture in death. And indeed 
 why should it ? for in all probability he will have served 
 his country in various ofi&cial capacities. Many have devoted 
 much time to the duties of Poor Law Guardians. Others 
 have served in the ever expanding work of Municipal 
 Corporations. Laborious and invaluable work has been done 
 on several School Boards by Friends. Many have become 
 Magistrates ; and in proportion to the size of the body, quite 
 a large number have been members of Parliament, f In 
 that secluded environment of which we have spoken, a type 
 of character had been fashioned, excellently fitted for the 
 service of a free self-governing democracy. Nor has the democracy 
 been slow to recognise this fitness, as may be illustrated by 
 reference to the experience of two or three localities. For many 
 years Birmingham was represented by a Friend in Parliament. 
 Seven members of the local congregation have filled the ofl&ce of 
 Mayor. Ten are, or have been members of its Corporation, eight 
 Magistrates, nine Poor Law Guardians, two members of the 
 School Board, one a County Councillor. Nineteen persons in 
 all have filled these ofi&ces. 
 
 * strictly speaking, every person in the parish in which he dies has 
 always had aright of sepulture in the parish churchyard, as well as in that 
 ■of which he is a parishioner by residence. What the Act of 1880 did was 
 to give Friends and other Nonconformists the right to hold their own 
 service at the grave, if they so desired. — [Editor.] 
 
 t The extent to which Friends' convictions had changed may be illus- 
 trated by an extract from the Yearly Meeting's Epistle of 1775, respecting 
 the War of American Independence. " We are informed that the body of 
 Friends in America, as well as here, are generally preserved from concern- 
 ing themselves as parties in the present heats and commotions, and we 
 intreat all in membership with us to enter as little into conversation 
 respecting them as possible, and daily to seek for and abide under the 
 influence of that heavenly principle which leads to 'follow peace with all 
 men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.' " — See also 
 p. 403. — [Editor.] 
 
DENOMINATIONAL AND NATIONAL LIFE. 227 
 
 Turning to smaller places, we find that York is represented 
 by a Friend in Parliament. Seven of the present members of 
 the Meeting are or have been in the Corporation, two are Magis- 
 trates, two have been Sheriffs. Scarborough is represented by 
 a Friend in Parliament, four have served in the Corporation, 
 three on the School Board, two are Poor Law Guardians, and two 
 Magistrates. Since the incorporation of Darlington, ten Friends 
 have served the town as Mayors, five others have been members 
 of the Corporation, and seven are Magistrates.* 
 
 It has been pointed out how fifty years ago, the life of a Friend's 
 child was untouched by the action of the nation : nothing hap- 
 pened to remind the child that the nation had an interest 
 in him. This is no longer the case. Before he is conscious, the 
 infant bom in a Friend's family has been registered by the State, 
 and vaccinated under its direction. In this much-examined age 
 it is almost melancholy to note how early little boys and girls at 
 the elementary schools begin to understand the visits of the 
 H. M. inspectors, and their own passage from one standard to 
 another, as amongst the chief events of their young lives. If 
 the child is at Ackworth or York School, he learns with early 
 interest that, through the South Kensington Department, the 
 nation will assign him a position in art or mathematics, and 
 ultimately furnish him, if successful, with a certificate having its 
 distinct commercial value ia the equipment of life. To how many 
 — ^both boys and girls — are the matriculation examinations of 
 London University events of no little importance. A smaller 
 number take the higher examinations ; and the possession of a 
 degree is fast becoming an essential for holding a good position 
 as a teacher in a Friends' school. The attitude of Friends towards 
 the Universities has undergone a complete revolution in my life- 
 time. Formerly, as far as my memory goes. Friends knew hardly 
 anything of what was going on at Oxford or Cambridge ; now 
 there are always some of their young people living there, and 
 University news is a common matter of conversation, 
 
 * The reader will remember that this and the foregoing paragraph 
 were written in 1892. — [Editor.] 
 
228 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 The facts of which I have been speaking are so patent that 
 I think there will be no difference of opinion as to their importance. 
 But the changes have come gradually, they have been progressive 
 through sixty years, so that each step in the change has not been 
 noted at the time, and probably few have realised their real magni- 
 tude. 
 
 And now, in apostolic phraseology, What shall we say to these 
 things ? In the first place, surely, that we ought to be thankful 
 for this great extension of religious liberty, every day of our lives. 
 " Many prophets and righteous men have desired to see the things 
 which [we] see and have not seen them." " Other inen.labsaied. 
 and Fwel have entered into their labours." Secondly, we should 
 reniShber that the temple of religious freedom is stDl unfinished, 
 and should seek to speed the progress of the nations in the 
 direction of Cavour's policy of " free Churches in free States." 
 Absolute religious equality, in the eye of the State, for every 
 religious denomination, is the goal at which England, Scotland, 
 Wales, and Ireland should ultimately arrive. 
 
 But now as to the effect of the change on the Society of Friends. 
 Edmund Burke said " the price of liberty is eternal vigilance." 
 One application of these pregnant words may be to suggest a 
 closer scrutiny of the influence exerted on the denominational 
 life of Friends by the larger religious liberty now enjoyed. It 
 can be no matter of surprise that the maintenance of its Church 
 meetings — those which carry on its government — ^has become 
 more difficult. In some places their attendance has diminished. 
 Their relative importance to other public engagements has prac- 
 tically been lessened, in the general estimation of the Society. 
 These meetings were to our grandfathers the chief gatherings 
 they attended. Now they form but one section of a procession 
 of meetings, which annually begins on New Year's Day, and ends 
 only with the last day of December. It is physically impossible 
 for a man to attend aU the meetings that come in his way. He 
 must make a selection. And when that selection has been made, 
 it may frequently seem as though the denominational gathering 
 were less important than its competitor. The administration of 
 
DENOMINATIONAL AND NATIONAL LIFE. 229 
 
 a small body deals with things on a smaller scale than in the larger 
 circles of the world's greater affairs. Few Monthly Meetings 
 amongst Friends deal directly with more than two or three 
 hundred people. The business of a comparatively smaU Corpora- 
 tion like that of York deals with the concerns of a population three 
 or four times as numerous as all the Friends in Britain. The larger 
 administration is more interesting on its human side. A person 
 may become interested in the finances of a Quarterly or Monthly 
 Meeting, but such seem very small when compared with those of 
 the city of York, which in turn are insignificant compared with 
 those of Leeds, Birmingham or London. Again, if we take an 
 illustration of a moral kind, the Watch Committee of a Corpora- 
 tion has a quite remjirkable influence on the moral life of a com- 
 munity. Can it be wondered at that Christian men will some- 
 times deliberately prefer to serve the Master on a Watch Com- 
 mittee, rather than in a Friends' Monthly Meeting, because they 
 think they can there render better service ? Again, one part of 
 the duty of meetings for discipline is the care of the poor. In 
 this direction the service of many Friends is truly useful, but can 
 it be any matter of surprise that the duty of a Poor Law Guardian 
 dealing with thousands of indigent, rather than with tens, should 
 seem, nay should really be more important than that of the 
 Friend Overseer in his small administration ? Take again the 
 matter of education. Within the last twenty years, the com- 
 mittees of Ackworth and York Schools have lost some of their 
 best men, who have become members and perhaps chairmen of 
 School Boards. It is said, with great force, that the care of the 
 three hundred children at Ackworth, and the hundred and forty 
 at York, is numerically an insignificant matter compared with 
 that of the tens of thousands in the Board Schools of Sheffield or 
 Huddersfield. 
 
 Again, apart from the influence of legislation, with which up 
 to this point we have chiefly dealt, there are other changes in 
 the conditions of life in Great Britain, which are, I believe, setting 
 against the maintenance of denominational life. One is the great 
 expansion of the population and the enlargement of towns, so re- 
 
230 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 moving the homes of Friends further from one another, and in- 
 creasing the physical difl&culties of attending meetings. 
 
 The establishment of cheap newspapers, and of the railway 
 and telegraph systems, have done for the nation that which a great 
 quickening of nervous energy does for an individual. The whole 
 nation is drawn closer together. If a prince is ill, the whole 
 nation watches at his bedside. When an election happens at Cork, 
 or Leeds, or in Devonshire, the whole nation receives the intelli- 
 gence of the result within a few minutes of the announcement. 
 Indirectly all these influences tell in the direction of making 
 men feel their interest in the national, rather than in the denomina- 
 tional life. The tendency to absorption in the great current of 
 the national life grows stronger, and predisposes to f orgetf ulness of 
 the tiny stream of the denominational life. May it not be said 
 that our grandfathers were firstly Friends, then Englishmen ; of 
 our fathers that they were Englishmen and Friends ; and of the 
 present generation — speaking broadly — that they are firstly 
 Englishmen and then Friends ? If this view be correct, I must 
 stop to point out how the result vindicates the policy of the Liberal 
 statesmen to whom we are indebted for the series of measures 
 which have removed theological tests and religious disabilities. 
 It has been the contention of these statesmen that the State 
 suffered by being deprived of the services of any part of the 
 population through religious disabilities. Manifestly the removal 
 of disabilities from Roman Catholics, Jews and Protestant Non- 
 conformists has brought to the service of the State a great amount 
 of talent and ability of which otherwise it would have been 
 deprived, and has helped to weld into one great homogeneous 
 population a people who before were divided by sectional interests 
 and denominational disabilities. When fresh thoughts and 
 feelings are stirring in a community, they will frequently find 
 expression in new words. The popularity of the modem word 
 solidarity is probably a token of the drift of thought in the 
 direction I have been indicating. 
 
 And this brings me to what I fear wiU seem a weak point to many 
 readers. I find it difficult to set forth any policy, adequate to the 
 
DENOMINATIONAL AND NATIONAL LIFE. 23I 
 
 emergency, for the adoption of the Society in view of those altered 
 conditions of the national life which have been described. It 
 may fairly be said, "You have shown how strong are the in- 
 fluences inimical to the maintenance of the denominational life of 
 Friends : are you prepared in view of these influences to assent 
 to the decay and extinction of their denominational life ? " The 
 reply to this question will turn very much on the estimation in 
 which we hold the typical Friend character.* On. this point 
 amass of evidence, which cannot be brought forward here, goes to 
 show that this character still holds a unique position in English 
 society, a position of no httle moment to the highest interests of 
 the people, and to the progress of the Christian faith., I must 
 briefly take it for granted that most who read and hear this paper 
 will not be disposed to assent to the absorption of the Friends' 
 denominational life in the national as a thing which has had its 
 day and done its work. On the contrary, it would seem as though 
 the responsibility of larger claims and widened duties demands 
 in some respects even a closer union with the channels through 
 which spiritual strength largely flows. Men need to be spiritually 
 equipped for the most secular services. And when the stream of 
 human life and effort widens out, is there not more need than ever 
 that the channels of communication with its Source be kept free, 
 deep and unclogged ? To fulfil the outward duties of life nobly, 
 there must be a vigorous, continually renewed and quickened 
 inward or religious life — a vigorous Church life in the most 
 spiritual sense of the word. " For every advance in religious 
 life," said Mazzini, " we can point to a corresponding social 
 advance in the history of humanity." So that not selfishly, 
 but for the sake of worthily discharging their service to 
 humanity, may Christian people desire, pray, and labour for 
 
 * " We think it is a plain matter of history, that a character for in- 
 flexibility of purpose, sometimes called obstinacy, JEor an independency 
 of action, often termed singularity, for a strict construction of the laws 
 of truth and justice, which all men liked when it operated in their own 
 favour, and sometimes honoured when it was even against them, and, 
 lastly, a character of kindly sympathy with man under all circumstances 
 of his condition, have by a sort of common consent been awarded to this 
 people." — Saniuel Juke's Five Papers, 26. 
 
233 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 the continual growth and prosperity of the Church to which 
 they belong. 
 
 which have moulded it mus^jgjfegk^eg^^^ 
 To^^strw_^th& infiuprit;^ ^^ expect the character to remSitr- 
 
 is.as unreasonable as to lo o k for the verdure of an Engli sh lawn 
 under the rainless sky of Egypt. The ineetings lor discipline 
 have been influential factors in the formation of character. We 
 may assume that self-government is an indispensable requirement 
 of a community like the Society of Friends. If so, it follows, as 
 a consequence, that this government must be carried on by the 
 body of the members, and that if they will not take their share in 
 it, decrepitude must follow. It would seem, then, as if the continu- 
 ance of the Society was almost bound up with the maintenance of 
 its Church meetings. I recognise the great force of the influences 
 which tell against their maintenance, but the true inference from 
 this appears to be that these difi&culties should be faced, and if pos- 
 sible surmounted, not succumbed to. The difficulties of keeping 
 up these meetings in the seventeenth century were tremendous, 
 in the face of the awful persecution of that time, but as that was 
 not permitted to destroy the system, so perhaps the difficulties 
 of the present day may be surmoimted. It is one thing, and often 
 a good thing, to recognise difficulties, another to give in to them. 
 If individuals and a community are agreed in their estimation of 
 some institution as valuable, it helps to give to that institution 
 a right position in relation to other institutions. He who thinks 
 a Monthly Meeting a matter of importance, as being part of a 
 valuable system, will carefully consider, when two appointments 
 clash, which is the one he should attend. I have spoken of the 
 considerations which might weigh very strongly with a man who 
 serves on a Corporation Watch Committee ; but there are others 
 which may very fairly come into the whole consideration. He 
 may remember that the Committee is large, and the absence of one 
 not necessarily so much felt as in the smaller meeting of Friends. 
 And again all have need to remember the excellent " gallery 
 text "— " mind your calling, brethren." A teacher, including in 
 
DENOMINATIONAL AND NATIONAL LIFE. 233 
 
 that term others than professional teachers, but not excluding 
 these, may remember that in a Church meeting he may have oppor- 
 tunities of influencing people who may make better members 
 of a Corporation committee than he himself can be. One cannot 
 doubt that John Bright was as truly called to be a legislator, 
 as Paul to be an Apostle to the Gentiles. Joseph John Gumey 
 has left an account of his questioning whether he should not have 
 offered himself as a candidate for the representation of Norwich. 
 We may be glad he did not do so. It is ahnost certain he would 
 have been far less useful in Parliament than as a Minister amongst 
 Friends, and a Christian philanthropist. May we not go further 
 and say that it is rarely a desirable thing for a Christian Minister 
 to enter Parliament ? For the vast majority of men the duties 
 of either vocation are greater than they have strength and grace 
 for, without attempting to combine the two. To some men Christ's 
 words carry a deep significance — " Let the dead bury their own 
 dead ; but go thou and publish abroad the kingdom of God." 
 
 On the other hand, there may be a temptation not less real nor 
 less mischievous in just the opposite direction. Monasticism — 
 with its hideous corruptions — ^was but the extreme form of the 
 spirit which seeks to escape from evil by shunning contact with 
 earthly business. At the present time it seems probable that some 
 of the Friends in the United States might render a great service 
 to their country by taking a more active part in its legislature. 
 The modem examples in this country of the tabooing of civil 
 engagements by religious professors, who say their politics are in 
 Heaven, have not been encouraging in their results. It is a policy 
 which promotes a sickly kind of pietism — ^not a robust and practi- 
 cal life of duty, fruitful in good to man and bringing glory to God. 
 Were Friends now to turn their backs on the openings for public 
 work afforded by the constitution of this country and by the 
 willingness of their fellow citizens to elect them, and to throw 
 all their strength into their denominational concerns, the result 
 would, we have little doubt, illustrate the Lord's saying, " Who- 
 soever shall seek to save his life shall lose it." We believe the 
 largest amount of spiritual vitality is not now found amongst 
 
234 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 those congregations of Friends which have the smallest number 
 of members holding civil appointments. 
 
 But the question remains, what is to be done to maintain the 
 power and influence of the Society's Church meetings ? Must 
 we not rely largely on the maintenance of a healthy public opinion 
 respecting them ? At the present time is not the swing of the 
 pendulum going too far in the direction of seeking good ends 
 through the interposition of law ? And do we not need to be re- 
 called to an appreciation of the slow growth of character, which 
 the meetings for discipline may do so much to promote ? 
 
 It is encouraging to notice that sometimes, by a little change 
 of arrangement, the interest in Church meetings has been greatly 
 increased. We might refer to the winter Quarterly Meeting 
 conferences at York ; and to Monthly Meetings, changed from a 
 morning to afternoon or evening, with a greatly increased atten- 
 dance in consequence.* Strong as are the influences making 
 it difi&cult to keep up Church meetings, are they insuperable ? 
 May not much be done by holding them at times and under 
 conditions suitable to the requirements of their members ; and 
 lastly by encouraging all to attend to those pointings of the Divine 
 finger, which would direct one into one line of service, and another 
 into a different line — "every man according to his several 
 abUity ? " 
 
 Leaving now the subject of Church meetings, let us consider 
 the efEect of the changes we have described upon the educational 
 policy of Friends. It has been pointed out that half a century 
 ago the Society had made a provision for the boarding-school 
 education of all classes of its members. The closing of Grove 
 House School was a token that the wealthiest families in the 
 denomination had become less solicitous to have their children 
 educated in a Friendly atmosphere. The recent estabUshment 
 of Leighton Park School shows this feeling not to be universal. 
 Time alone will prove whether members of Parliament, and those 
 
 • Later developments, in the way of provincial Yearly Meetings, and 
 week-end Quarterly and Monthly Meetings, are in direct line with this 
 argument. — [Editor.] 
 
DENOMINATIONAL AND NATIONAL LIFE. 235 
 
 who count their income by thousands, will prefer an education 
 for their sons amongst denominational surroundings, or with 
 the larger prestige of a career at Eton, Harrow, Rugby, or 
 Marlborough. 
 
 When we come to examine the influence on the middle-class 
 schools of a quickened national, and a relaxed denominational 
 life, it is found to show itself chiefly in necessitating various modifi- 
 cations of cirrangement. The great body of Friends being middle- 
 class people, there is a larger constituency from which to recruit 
 the schools, and some difficulties felt by the affluent and the wage- 
 earners press less closely here. In former days the calendar 
 of a Friends' school was dependent upon the times of denomina- 
 tional gatherings ; now it is found that these have to give way 
 to dates fixed by examining bodies like the University of London. 
 As a matter of Sentiment, I have regretfully observed the substi- 
 tution for vacation-times dependent on Quarterly Meetings begin- 
 ning on the " 4th day preceding the last 5th day in 4th and 7th 
 months," of dates determined by the festivals of Easter or Whit- 
 suntide. But the change is inevitable. I apprehend there will 
 be little or no demur to the position that the right policy for the 
 middle-class schools of the Society is to persevere in that they 
 have already adopted, which, whilst striving to maintain their 
 distinctive excellencies, uses with discrimination the opportunities 
 afforded by the educational provision of the nation for testing 
 the quality of the literary instruction given. 
 
 I have referred to the excellent Friends' girls' schools in a 
 former part of this paper. It is a cause of great congratulation 
 that the better and more intelligent education of girls has been 
 so largely promoted in our time, by the estabUshment of admirable 
 High Schools, by the bestowing of degrees by London University, 
 and by the foundation of colleges for women at Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge. The influence of these changes is telling on the denomin- 
 ational machinery for the teaching of girls. One way in which it 
 shows itself is the lessened demand for Friend governesses in 
 private families. Probably in one way or other the demand for 
 women teachers amongst Friends is as great as ever, but I think 
 
236 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 the public demand is now for a good teacher first, and for a 
 good Friend as the second qualification. 
 
 The provision for the education of the children of artisans 
 has exercised the thoughts of many in recent years. Here again 
 several of the difficulties of the present-day problem are the out- 
 come of changes to be greatly thankful for. 
 
 Few things in the England of 1892 would more delight the 
 men who founded the British and Foreign School Society, men 
 like Joseph Lancaster, William Allen, and Robert Forster, than 
 the work of the London School Board. But the excellence of the 
 national elementary education has introduced a new set of condi- 
 tions, so far as the children of Friends are concerned, in relation 
 to the schools of the Society. The mere imparting of know- 
 ledge in the Board Schools is in many cases as good as or better 
 than in the Friends' boarding-schools, whilst the contrast in 
 expense is very marked, and this has recently been accentuated 
 by the action of the Government in the direction of free education. 
 The wage-earner sees that in the public elementary schools his 
 children obtain admirable teaching at a minimima of cost to him- 
 self. He naturally hesitates to pay a much larger sum, and, in ad- 
 dition, to accept the benevolence of his wealthier co-religionists, 
 in order to send his children away from home to a boarding-school. 
 In view of the facts of the position, the diminution of applications 
 for admission at some of the Friends' schools can excite no surprise. 
 
 I am wishful in this paper to avoid raising side issues, liable 
 to divert attention from the leading positions I am endeavouring 
 to lay down. I therefore do not stop to discuss the merits of the 
 proposal, now before the Society, that it should make a great 
 effort to offer a boarding-school education to all the children of 
 its members ; perhaps to go further and include aJl children where 
 one parent is a member. The initial considerations would seem 
 to be : (i) is this really the best course for the children ? and (2) 
 should the offer be made, how far will it be accepted ? The 
 present expense would not be more than Friends could compass. 
 We shall not be far wrong in assuming that to make such an offer 
 to all the children named, we must be prepared to supplement 
 
DENOMINATIONAL AND NATIONAL LIFE. 237 
 
 the pajmients of the parents by a capitation grant of about 
 £20. A hundred children then will require £2,000 per annum ; 
 200 children £4,000 per annum ; 300 children £6,000. It would 
 not seem Ukely that at present this number would be reached. 
 Looking at the great sums raised for Foreign Mission purposes, 
 we may assume that Friends can raise the largest sum I have 
 indicated if they choose to do so. They wiU require, however, 
 to be satisfied that the object is adequate to the effort, and that 
 the offered gift will be accepted.* 
 
 But however this part of the educational problem of the 
 day may be solved, it seems to be beyond doubt that the 
 educational provision of the Society wiU, in the future, as respects 
 all its children, be less self-contained and separate from the 
 national educational provision than was the case in the middle 
 of the present century. If we assume that the promoters of 
 Leighton Park School succeed in gathering there as large a 
 proportion of the wealthier boys as went formerly to Grove House, 
 their career will certainly in many cases be supplemented by 
 some years at the Universities, where the denominational 
 influence, so far as Friends are concerned, will be very slight. 
 To a considerable extent the same wiU apply to the middle-class 
 boys' schools. By scholarships, and in other ways, it is observable 
 that the pupils are increasingly using the Friends' schools as one 
 stage in a course which leads on to Owens College, or to Cambridge, 
 or to study on the Continent. As regards girls, it is likely that 
 the influence of the High Schools will teU increasingly in the 
 direction of retaining the daughters of Friends at home during 
 their school life, to be followed in many cases by a time on the 
 Continent, at the London colleges, or at Girton, Newnham, or 
 Somerville. Then, as regards the artisan's children, if we assume 
 the present effort to be successful in offering to them aU a 
 boarding-school education, it is not likely that the time passed 
 there wiU on an average exceed two years. The time spent at 
 the day elementary school will, in the majority of cases, much 
 exceed that spent in the Friends' school. 
 
 * See Chapter x. 
 
238 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 Thus it appears probable that the education of the children 
 of Friends in every station will increasingly be carried on in 
 connection with the national educational machinery, and less in 
 connection with that which is exclusively denominational. Then, 
 if the influence of the Friends' boarding-schools has diminished, 
 and is likely to diminish, where are the factors which can 
 compensate for this loss ? They would seem to be two : 
 (i) pEurental influence ; (2) the direct influence of the Church, 
 exercised through children's classes, children's meetings, 
 Sunday Schools and in other vrays. Should these two influences 
 be brought out into greater prominence, the changes that are 
 going on around us will bring with them some compensating 
 advantages. 
 
 What is it that Friends aim at in the education of their 
 children ? They aim at giving them a " religious education " ; 
 but by this they mean almost the antithesis of that which many 
 persons mean, who most often have that phrase on their 
 tongues. A Roman Cathohc, tenacious for " religious education," 
 really means a training for the child, which shall indelibly stamp 
 its mind with the idea that the priest — ^representing the Church — 
 is alone able to give him pardon here and Heaven hereafter. 
 A knowledge of the Church catechism is the primary idea of a 
 religious education in the view of the average Anghcan educa- 
 tionist. 
 
 The characteristics of a religious education according to the 
 Friend ideal have been sketched by Samuel Tuke in the following 
 passage : — 
 
 " We believe, indeed, that parents need to feel still more than 
 they do, that they are the chief educators of their children, and 
 that it is but a small portion of that great work which can be de- 
 volved upon the masters and mistresses of our schools. The charge 
 of these instructions is indeed a weighty one ; the years which are 
 spent at school include one of the most important periods of life ; 
 body and mind are expanding — the will strengthens — the passions 
 unfold — the judgment is still weak — the least part of education at 
 this period, important as it is, is the mere communication of know- 
 ledge ; the formation of right habits, intellectual and moral, the 
 
DENOMINATIONAL AND NATIONAL LIFE. 239 
 
 fixing in the mind of Christian principles of action, and the sub- 
 jection to them of the will, are of infinitely more importance to the 
 welfare, we might say to the greatness of the future man, than the 
 largest accumulations of art and science. Well may we inquire, 
 who is sufficient for these things ? And we are bound to answer, 
 that with man it is impossible, but with God all things are possible ; 
 and the meek and humble follower of the Saviour in this noble 
 calling will not want a portion of that heavenly wisdom, which, 
 though in its operations it be often less striking to the outward 
 eye than that which is merely human, works in harmony with divine 
 grace, and has a power in it which is seen in its ultimate effects. 
 Faith — hope — ^love — must be the sustaining watchwords of the 
 Christian instructor."* 
 
 The passage from which the foregoing has been taken is so 
 admirable both in matter and diction, that I should like to have 
 extended the quotation. But I have long trespassed upon your 
 attention and must draw towards a close. Nearly fifty years 
 have passed since the words just read were listened to for the 
 first time at a meeting of the Friends' Educational Society. Are 
 they not as apposite now ? Do not the truths here enforced 
 require insisting upon to every generation ? The disposition to 
 discharge, or to try to discharge, moral eind religious duty by 
 proxy is so congenial to the human mind, that we may venture 
 the assertion that the time wiU never come when the truths 
 which Samuel Tuke enforced will cease to require emphasising 
 by the Church of Christ. One practical object before me in pre- 
 paring this paper has been to urge that more emphasis be laid 
 on the power of this home training in habits and principles, 
 in the Church meetings of Friends, and in the teaching of our 
 men's and women's Adult Schools. It is a point that I hope 
 may be fvirther elucidated in the discussion shortly to be entered 
 upon. 
 
 There are some other aspects of the subject we have been 
 considering, which, had time allowed, I should like to have 
 discussed. It might have been very interesting to consider 
 why the stronger national and the weaker denominational 
 
 * Samuel Tuke's Five Papers, i lo. 
 
240 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 life of to-day affect Friends more than the other Free Churches. 
 But this inviting train of inquiry must be left untouched. 
 
 Nor can I occupy time in deprecating criticisms, to which I 
 foresee my paper will be open, and which indeed I could easily 
 write myself. One remark which is certain to occur to many 
 readers is that the reasons given for the diminished interest in 
 Church meetings, and the lessened desire to have children educated 
 amongst Friendly surroundings, are not adequate, and that 
 nothing has been said of slackened religious zeal and the power 
 of earthly-mindedness. The remembrance of these temptations 
 has never been absent from the writer's thoughts whilst penning 
 the foregoing ; but these things are no novelties in the experience 
 of the Church. Spiritual languor and earthly-mindedness were 
 largely known by the generations which have preceded us. They 
 wUl always be amongst the foes of the spiritual life. But it is 
 assumed, through all the course of the consideration to which I 
 have invited you, that the constitution of himian nature is 
 unaltered, and that its temptations, snares, and besetments are 
 in substance the same in Britain in the closing years of the Vic- 
 torian age as they were fifty or a hundred years ago. 
 
 I think, then, I have succeeded in showing that the conditions 
 of Church life, especially as regards the Society of Friends, have 
 undergone a vast change in the last sixty years. Without taking 
 account of this change, we cannot understand " the state of the 
 Society," to use a Yearly Meeting phrase. The phenomena of 
 Society life around us are inexplicable without having regard to 
 the changes which have been progressive through the period 
 named. When a ship's captain finds his vessel swept by a 
 current in a new direction, it is greatly to his advantage if he 
 knows the set of the current, its power, its potential helpfulness, 
 as weU as the perils to which it may expose his vessel. So the 
 Christian Church has reason to take notice of the currents of 
 thought, and the set of events and circimistances outside her, 
 which affect and help to mould her collective life. 
 
 The positions I have endeavoured to make clear may be 
 recapitulated under seven heads : — 
 
DENOMINATIONAL AND NATIONAL LIFE. 24I 
 
 (i) That the legislation, and the conditions of social and 
 national life in the last seventy years, have tended to the larger 
 introduction of Friends into civil work and society, with an 
 accompanjTing tendency to relaxation of interest in their denomi- 
 national concerns. 
 
 (2) That this broadened religious liberty shoTild be hailed 
 and remembered with constant thankfulness, as harmonising 
 with those principles of human freedom, and the rights of 
 conscience, proclaimed and suffered for by the first generation 
 of Friends, and practically illustrated by them in the constitutions 
 of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. 
 
 (3) That the threatened absorption of the denominational 
 life of the Society in the national is a result to be deprecated. 
 Both have their right places. The altered condition of things 
 calls for the best thought from Friends, how that which is and 
 has been distinctively excellent in their polity may be preserved. 
 
 (4) That the maintenance of the Church meetings of the 
 Society is indispensable to its continued health, almost to its exist- 
 ence, and to the formation of right character in its members ; 
 hence that persevering efforts should be put forth by Friends to- 
 sustain their Church meetings, adapting arrangements to the 
 altered circumstances of the time. 
 
 (5) That whilst service in civil society is not to be shunned, 
 it is not necessarily the most fruitful form of Christian service, and 
 that probably the tone of feeling amongst Friends has latterly 
 gone at least far enough in the direction of promoting their 
 engagements in civU and political life. As, in Apostolic days, 
 caution was required against an over estimate of the gift of tongues, 
 a corresponding caution may be pertinent now against under- 
 valuing the quieter and less conspicuous spheres of service wherein 
 Christian character is formed and matured. 
 
 (6) That the altered condition of national education is making 
 it impossible, and even undesirable for Friends to maintain their 
 excellent denominational boarding-school system altogether 
 apart from the general educational life of the nation. That it is a 
 wise policy in Friends to maintain, as far as possible, that which is 
 
 17 
 
242 JOHN STEPHENSON EOWNTREE. 
 
 distinctively excellent in their schools, and promptly to introduce 
 any real improvements, whilst emplo5ang the facilities now 
 offered for testing and helping their work. 
 
 (7) That the less exclusively denominational education given 
 to the children of Friends makes it incumbent on the Society 
 to recall the attention of parents to the unique power of home 
 influence in the formation of character. This influence, as well 
 as that of the Society in its collective capacity, should be power- 
 fully exerted for the right training of children. How this may 
 be done, how the same aspects of religious education may be 
 brought under the frequent notice of the members of Adult 
 Schools, deserves the earnest attention of teachers. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 GOSPEL MINISTRY IN THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS.* 
 
 'TpHE apostolic solicitude that the brethren at Corinth might 
 not be ignorant concerning spiritual gifts warrants the sur- 
 mise that Paul would not have withheld his benediction from 
 recent discussions upon the Ministry, so far as these have 
 elucidated the true place ordained for spiritual gifts in the 
 economy of the Christian Church. 
 
 It was pointed out by a writer in the Friends' Quarterly 
 Examiner of 1893, p. 85, that Friends are not rich in literature on 
 the Ministry. Joseph J. Dymond's booklet, Gospel Ministry 
 in the Society of Friends, then under review, and Samuel Bownas's 
 Description of the Qualifications necessary to a Gospel Minister, 
 1750, are almost the only denominational writings exclusively 
 devoted to the work of the preacher. That conception of Chris- 
 tianity which recognises the rule of a spiritual kingdom, controlling 
 the whole life of man, is somewhat unfavourable to concentrated 
 attention upon one department of service, severed from its 
 connection with kindred branches of faith and practice. The 
 spiritual atmosphere at the time of the rise of Methodism was 
 so different from that of our time that the present-day reader 
 finds many of Bownas's pages occupied with matters remote from 
 those which now demand attention. Barclay's weighty discussion 
 in the Apology is naturally more antagonistic to usages from which 
 he and his co-religionists had revolted, than constructively helpful 
 for the development of the Ministry on hnes which they approved. 
 One may sympathise with the thought which refuses to isolate the 
 * From the Friends' Quarterly Examiner, of July, 1904. 
 
244 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 work of the preacher from other departments of life, and yet 
 acknowledge a blank in the literature of the Society, in view of 
 such suggestive writings, whether from Episcopalian, Presby- 
 terian, Congregational, or Baptist authors, as Bishop Lightfoot's 
 essay on The Christian Ministry, Phillips Brooks's Lectures on 
 Preaching, Dr. John Watson's The Cure of Souls, Dr. R. W. 
 Dale's Nine Lectures on Preaching, and C. H. Spurgeon's Lectures 
 to My Students. This blank makes additionally valuable any 
 careful treatment of the Ministry from the standpoint of Friends, 
 in writing or in speech ; and though much space has been 
 devoted to it in this magazine, there may be room to offer a few 
 further thoughts on so large a question. 
 
 Much which has recently been said about the Ministry 
 emphasises the change which has come over the tone of the Society 
 in two hundred years. In the seventeenth century its adherents 
 strenuously maintained that theirs was a type of Ministry superior 
 to that of the denominations around them, because exercised 
 upon truer and more spiritual principles. Now, the defects of the 
 Friend Ministry are apparently widely felt, and it is frequently 
 contrasted unfavourably with that of other religious bodies. 
 The present generation does not seem to have found the 
 expectations of its spiritual ancestors fulfilled, and it may, perhaps, 
 be maintained that the present condition of the Society affords 
 some justification for current criticism. This state of things 
 may rightly occasion searchings of heart and htmiiliation of 
 spirit, especially amongst those who deem that a share in the 
 vocal Ministry has been committed to their charge. These will 
 welcome every contribution prompted by the desire to strengthen 
 this department of the Society's administration. 
 
 In the Symposium on the Ministry in the Friends^ Quarterly 
 Examiner of 1903 (pp. 526-569), three of the six contributors 
 maintain that fundamental misgivings as to the place and service 
 of vocal Ministry are reaUy at the root of much of the dis- 
 satisfaction felt with it, whilst a fourth practically illustrates 
 the existence of these misgivings. The frequent recurrence 
 of such questionings will hardly surprise any reflective person. 
 
GOSPEL MINISTRY IN THE SOCIETY. 245 
 
 From the standpoint of the intellect, " the foolishness of 
 preaching " stUl demands an apology. Conscious of the manifold 
 weaknesses of our human nature, we are prone to query whether 
 some better plan might not have been adopted than that which 
 gives to human instrumentality so large a share in the service 
 of God's kingdom. A ministry of angels suggests itself as free 
 from obj actions incident to human ministry. Still more attractive 
 is the idea that all communications of Divine truth should be 
 made to man directly by God's Spirit, so that there might be a 
 complete escape from the limitations and errors that continually 
 assert themselves, where spiritual gifts are enshrined in earthen 
 vessels. This was the plausible position somewhat widely 
 accepted in Commonwealth days by the Ranters and by those 
 Friends who, sharing their opinions, refused to teach children the 
 facts and precepts of Christianity. The deplorable results that 
 followed gave a timely though a rude shock to those who had 
 accepted the fallacy lurking in this reasoning. Christ did not 
 fashion the polity of His Church on lines necessarily commending 
 themselves to human reason, but on principles adapted to the 
 progressive training and education of redeemed men. The logic 
 of the intellect stood corrected before the logic of facts.* 
 
 And now, the same authorities that proved so serviceable in 
 respect to the education of the young are available for our guidance 
 in determining the place and functions of vocal Ministry. The 
 pages of the New Testament disclose the Divinely ordained 
 principles regulating human agency in the affairs of the kingdom 
 of God, both by our Lord's example and words, and by those of 
 His apostles ; whilst in passages like i Cor. xii. 14, the mutual 
 relationship of these principles, and the conditions under which 
 spiritual gifts are to be received and exercised, are luminously 
 expounded. The long story of the Christian Church is at our 
 service, illustrating the happy results which have followed 
 obedience to these conditions, and the mischief which has followed 
 their disregard. Perhaps still more directly serviceable for our 
 immediate purpose is the experience of the Society of Friends, 
 * See George Fox's Epistles, Tuke's edition, 213, etc. 
 
246 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 now extending over a period of two hundred and fifty years, 
 
 including, of course, the lessons of its present condition. Such a 
 
 review will surely go far to dissipate the "practical disbelief 
 
 in any special gift or vocation in the Ministry of the Gospel."* 
 
 It is significant that so large a part of Christ's early work was 
 
 the training and teaching of a body of disciples who were to be 
 
 the apostles and heralds of His kingdom. These men, after two 
 
 or three years' companionship with their Master, and an appointed 
 
 tarriance at Jerusalem, received the Pentecostal endowment of 
 
 spiritual power, and forthwith entered upon their great work 
 
 of preaching the Gospel to every creature. Yet they were not 
 
 insensible of their limitations. They knew in part, and they 
 
 prophesied in part. But they followed their Master's methods 
 
 in employing human agency to extend and build up His kingdom. 
 
 In every Church they appointed elders — ofl&ce-bearers charged 
 
 with two main lines of service, the ministry of the Word and the 
 
 ministry of tables, the qualifications for both being in some 
 
 conspicuous instances combined in one person, as in the proto- 
 
 martyr. Their doctrinal writings corresponded with their 
 
 practice. In the earliest apostolic letters, the Thessalonians 
 
 were besought " to know them that labour among you, and are 
 
 over you in the Lord, and admonish you ; and to esteem them 
 
 exceeding highly in love for their work's sake."t The Roman 
 
 Christians were taught that " having gifts differing according to 
 
 the grace that was given to us, whether prophecy, let us prophc^ 
 
 according to the proportion of our faith ; or ministry, let us give 
 
 ourselves to otu" ministry." J The same writer instructed the 
 
 Ephesians that Christ, having led captivity captive, was conferring 
 
 gifts on men, " some to be apostles ; and some, prophets ; and 
 
 some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the 
 
 perfecting of the saints, unto the work of ministering, unto the 
 
 building up of the body of Christ."§ The bestowal of tiiese 
 
 gifts was appealed to as a token of the continning care of Christ 
 
 for His Church ; " God also bearing witness with them both by 
 
 • See the Friend^ Quarterly Examiner, 1903, 546. f 1 Thess. v. 12-13. 
 
 % Rom. xii. 6-7. § Ephes. iv. 11 -12. 
 
GOSPEL MINISTRY IN THE SOCIETY. 247 
 
 signs and wonders, and by manifold powers, and by gifts of the 
 Holy Ghost."* In the presence of these Divinely bestowed gifts, 
 the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews saw a symptom of 
 spiritual weakness when the station of the Christian labourers came 
 to be meanly esteemed : — " Remember them that had the rule 
 over you, which spake unto you the word of God, and considering 
 the issue of their life, imitate their faith." And again, in the 
 same chapter : — " Obey them that have the rule over you, and 
 submit to them : for they watch in behalf of your souls, as they 
 that shall give account." f Reviewing the methods by which 
 Christianity was diffused, and the Churches built up throughout 
 the Roman Empire, we everywhere find evidences of organisation, 
 and the presence of spiritual gifts — charismata — for the edification 
 as well as for the ingathering of disciples. 
 
 A humble man was the Apostle Paul, " the chief of sinners," 
 " not worthy to be called an apostle " when he remembered his 
 pre-Christian days ; but this personal humility never obscured 
 his sense of the call to the Ministry received from Christ. Whether 
 writing to the great Churches at Rome or Corinth, or to young 
 men like Timothy and Titus, he prefaces his letters with 
 exordiums like these : — 
 
 " Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, 
 
 separated unto the Gospel of God ; " or, " called to be an apostle 
 
 of Jesus Christ through the will of God " ; or, " an apostle of 
 
 Christ Jesus, according to the commandment of God our Saviour." 
 
 The Corinthians were instructed to account him and his colleagues 
 
 as " ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God " J 
 
 When writing his second epistle, he represents himself and his 
 
 colleagues as " able ministers of the New Testament,"§ by virtue 
 
 of the Divine sufficiency which has been conferred upon them, 
 
 and he encourages his fellow labourers to cherish corresponding 
 
 thoughts in regard to their gifts. He charged the Ephesian elders : 
 
 " Take heed unto yourselves, and to all the flock, in the which , 
 
 the Holy Ghost hath made you bishops, to feed the church of 
 
 * Heb. ii. 4. t Heb. xiii. 7, 17. J i Cor. iv. i. 
 
 § 2 Cor. iii. 6. 
 
248 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 God, which He purchased with His own blood."* Timothy, 
 as a young Minister, is counselled not to neglect the gift 
 that was in him, " given by prophecy, with the laying on of the 
 hands of the presbytery. Be diligent in these things ; give 
 thyself wholly to them ; that thy progress may be manifest unto 
 all."f Again, in his succeeding letter, the Apostle says, " I put 
 thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God, which is 
 in thee through the la5ang on of my hands." | 
 
 One does not forget, when reading these Scriptures, that Paul 
 wrought at tent-making, but it is clear that trade held a very 
 subordinate position in his thoughts and the occupation of his 
 time, as compared with the time and labour given to Gospel 
 Ministry. He saw that men were to be " workers together with 
 God." He felt in his own case the strength that sprang from 
 the conviction of having received a call to speak to his feUows on 
 behalf of God, and he desired that the same dynamic principle 
 might strengthen other labourers. The action of this sense of 
 vocation is not peculiar to religious work — ^it is found in many 
 departments of human activity ; it may animate the statesman, 
 stimulate the schoolmaster, glorify the life of the wife and mother. 
 On the other hand, the labourer who cherishes doubts concerning 
 the validity of his calling, risks an attack of mental and spiritual 
 paralysis which will retard or will arrest his service. 
 
 Turning now to the experience of Friends, it is an historic 
 fact that they were first gathered, as a people, by preachers 
 conscious of having received a Divine call to the Ministry of the 
 Gospel. The years of preparation through which George Fox 
 passed before entering on his mission constitute a memorable 
 passage in religious biography. He does not seem to have done 
 any manual work after attaining his majority, but in spiritual 
 fields he was, as WOliamPenn witnesses, "an incessant laboiurer," 
 and so were his most trusted colleagues. The establishment of 
 the Society in London was a great achievement in the Home 
 Mission field. Foremost among the evangelists were Francis 
 HowgUl and Edward Burrough. In 1656 these devoted men 
 * Acts XX. 28. t I Tim. iv. 14-15. J 2 Tim. i. 6. 
 
GOSPEL MINISTRY IN THE SOCIETY. 249 
 
 report that twenty meetings were being held every week in the 
 metropolis ; those for " thrashing " being of the most laborious 
 character, which only men of great bodily and spiritual strength 
 could have faced. 
 
 Of their service Edward Burrough, writing in 1662, says that 
 after the first opposition had been somewhat surmounted — 
 
 " the work of the Lord was much increased and it advanced greater 
 and greater daily, in respect of the service pertaining to it." 
 
 He then specified some of the business which sprang up in 
 connection with the rapid growth of Truth : — 
 
 " not so proper for us of the Ministry, as for the Friends of the City: 
 neither had we the opportunity of such exercises, being wholly devoted 
 to the work of the Ministry, to which we were ordained of God, and 
 were continually exercised in preaching the Gospel, in answering 
 books and manuscripts put forth against us, and in disputes and 
 contentions with such as opposed the Truth. These and the Like 
 services have been our continual work and exercise for these divers 
 years, faithfully performed by us in the sight of God."* 
 
 At a somewhat later date, Stephen Crisp — a man of large 
 gifts, appertaining both to the ministry of the Word and the 
 ministry of tables — says of his own service : — 
 
 " And I was exercised, according to my ability, in visiting the 
 assemblies of the Lord's people in Essex and Suffolk, where it lay 
 upon me ; and in helping and assisting the Lord's people according 
 to my ability, both in their spiritual and temporal concerns, as the 
 Lord God of my life gave me an understanding : for I gave up 
 the ordering of my spirit unto Him ; and He opened me in many 
 things relating to the affairs of this world, that I might be as a staff 
 to the weak in those things, and might stand by the widow and 
 fatherless, and plead the right of the poor. In all which, I sought 
 neither honour nor profit, but did all things freely, as I received of 
 God : and He whom I served was my reward, so that I lacked 
 nothing. Therefore, who would not praise the Lord, and who would 
 not trust in His Name ? "f 
 
 It is not to be supposed that every Friend Minister of this 
 period was as diligent as those who have been named. Ten 
 
 • Letters of Early Friends, 299. 
 
 t Tuke's Memoirs of Stephen Crisp, 92, 93. 
 
250 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 years had not passed from the opening of George Fox's Ministry 
 before he laments a declension in some whose religious work was 
 languishing under the influence of growing earthly prosperity. 
 To these he wrote : — 
 
 " Take heed of setting your hearts upon riches lest they become 
 a curse and a plague to you. For when ye were faithful at the first, 
 the world would refrain from you and not have commerce with you ; 
 but after, when they saw ye were faithful and just in things, and 
 righteous and honest in your trading and dealings, then they 
 came to have commerce and trade with you the more. But [he 
 added] in these things there is danger, and temptation [for] that 
 ye can hardly do anything to the service of God, but wUl be crying, 
 ' My business, my business.' "* 
 
 It would be a mistake to suppose that the Public Friendsf 
 of the seventeenth century gave no occasion for anxiety ; many 
 of them did occasion anxiety and require counsel ; and very 
 pertinent counsel was not withheld. In his correspondence with 
 Fox, Burrough laid great stress on the importance, for Friends' 
 evangelistic work, of having rightly qualified Ministers. He 
 himself must have exercised a somewhat strenuous control over 
 them ; for instance, in 1656, he sent one of the women preachers 
 to Fox with this note : — 
 
 " This little short maid that comes to thee, she has been this 
 long while abroad, and in her there is little or no service as in the 
 ministry. It were well to be laid on her to be a servant somewhere. 
 That is more her place. I leave it to thee. Friends where she has 
 been have been burdened by her." 
 
 Again, in 1658, William Dewsbury writes to Margaret Fell, asking 
 her to send a man and horse for S — K — , saying, " The Truth is 
 under suffering until she be in her family again." 
 
 In the later years of the seventeenth century the problem how 
 to maintain spiritual liberty along with congregational order 
 confronted the second generation of Friends in an imperious 
 fashion. It is estimated that there were now some 10,000 Friends 
 in the metropolis, not all of them sober-minded persons. The 
 weddings solemnised amongst them averaged more than one a 
 ♦ See George Tox's Epistles, Tuke's edition, 82. f See note, p. 257. 
 
GOSPEL MINISTRY IN THE SOCIETY. 23I 
 
 week ; funerals to be attended were of course frequent. Hence 
 an organisation was required different from that of the 
 " thrashing-meeting " era in the lifetime of Edward Burrough. 
 The distribution of the Public Friends to the various 
 meetings for Divine worship had to be arranged every 
 Sunday by a simple yet efficient machinery, as well as 
 their attendance at marriages and funerals. A similar 
 organisation existed at Bristol, and the germs of one are dis- 
 cernible in the early minutes of the Yorkshire Ministers. This 
 was the period when the meetings for discipline — monthly, 
 quarterly, and yearly — ^were coming into existence. These, at 
 their inception, encountered a widely spread opposition, some of 
 the consequences of which are still discernible. 
 
 The Wilkinson arid Story schismatics numbered amongst 
 their ranks good men who had witnessed to the reality of their 
 faith by patient endurance of imprisonment ; but there were also 
 base elements that mingled in the movement. The literature of 
 the controversy reveals great personal jealousy of George Fox 
 and his more prominent colleagues ; it discloses the presence of 
 very high spiritual assumption in alliance with selfish motives. 
 There was a disparagement of all Ministry, and, in fact, of aU 
 human instrumentality.* 
 
 Objections were raised to appointing either time or place 
 for meetings for worship or discipline. Great exception was 
 taken to the large subscriptions required for the work of the 
 itinerant preachers. Some of the dissentients objected to the 
 boldness of Friends in holding their meetings in the face of cruel 
 persecution, and counselled a more time-serving attitude. It 
 was apparently in connection with this controversy that London 
 Yearly Meeting was founded, or at any rate that its character 
 was changed from being a comparatively small gathering of 
 I^Iinisters to one with a strong representative element. Ultim- 
 ately, the upholders of Church government through the meetings 
 for discipline were successful, and in the course of years many of 
 the dissentients rejoined the Society. 
 
 * See chapter ii. 
 
252 
 
 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 The work of the itinerant Ministry continued — although 
 with lessening frequency — through the reign of Queen Anne and 
 her immediate successors. Up to the middle of the eighteenth 
 century some of the country meetings received religious visits 
 from travelling Ministers every other Sunday throughout the 
 year. The late Charles Hoyland compiled a list of 2,709 Ministers 
 who died in Great Britain and Ireland between 1700 and 1859 ; 
 of these, one-half died in the fifty years between 1700 and 1750.* 
 
 There is reason to believe that in 1700 two-thirds of all the 
 Friend congregations had approved Ministers resident within 
 their limits. Fifty years later the number of Public Friends had 
 so diminished that two-thirds of the meetings were without 
 resident Ministers, whilst the distribution of preachers in London 
 and elsewhere had become inefficient. In 1751, Samuel Bownas, 
 whose own Ministry had begun in 1697, wrote ; " The Church 
 seems very barren of young Ministers to what it was in our youth, 
 nor is there much convincement to what was then." It was an 
 epoch of religious lethargy. The meetings for discipline in some 
 districts were discontinued, and the numerical strength of the 
 Society declined. 
 
 * The following is the Return of Deaths of Ministering Friends 
 between 1700 and 1859, compiled by the late Charles Hoylaad: — 
 
 Periods of Ten Years. 
 
 Men. 
 
 Women. 
 
 Total. 
 
 From 1 700-1 709 
 
 144 
 
 43 
 
 187 
 
 1710-1719 
 
 192 
 
 73 
 
 265 
 
 1720-1729 
 
 205 
 
 108 
 
 313 
 
 I73t>-i739 
 
 159 
 
 88 
 
 247 
 
 1740-1749 
 
 15s 
 
 102 
 
 257 
 
 1750-1759 
 
 116 
 
 102 
 
 218 
 
 I 760-1 769 
 
 123 
 
 95 
 
 218 
 
 1770-1779 
 
 93 
 
 95 
 
 188 
 
 1780-1789 
 
 80 
 
 73 
 
 153 
 
 I 790-1 799 
 
 SI 
 
 55 
 
 106 
 
 1800-1809 
 
 47 
 
 47 
 
 94 
 
 1810-1819 
 
 33 
 
 61 
 
 94 
 
 1820-1829 
 
 34 
 
 57 
 
 91 
 
 183&-1839 
 
 42 
 
 64 
 
 106 
 
 1840-1849 
 
 35 
 
 58 
 
 93 
 
 1850-1859 
 
 25 
 
 54 
 
 79 
 
 
 IS34 
 
 "75 
 
 2709 
 
GOSPEL MINISTRY IN THE SOCIETY. 253 
 
 William Thistlethwaite stated (1865) that from a mass of 
 information which he had collected it was evident that in many 
 districts the number of Ministers, at the date when he was writing, 
 was less than one-third of what it had been in 1700.* 
 
 In the past forty years those taking vocal part in meetmgs 
 for worship in this country have much increased in number. 
 By the figures laid before the Conference on the Ministr3^ 
 held at York in 1903,! it appears that there are nearly one 
 thousand persons speaking not infrequently in meetings for 
 worship, and about an equal number speaking occasionally. The 
 number of Recorded and unrecorded Ministers forty years ago was 
 about SIX hundred. Along with this larger liberty of prophesjdng, 
 which may be hailed with thankfulness, other changes have been 
 in progress which cannot be regarded without apprehension. To 
 very few amongst this large number of speakers would the 
 remark apply, made in the memoir of Benjamin Seebohm : " His 
 Ministry was the most characteristic thing about his life. More 
 than anjHJiing else it was evidently that for which he lived." J 
 Again, whilst undoubtedly many lilinisters take part ia the week- 
 end visitation of other meetings than their own, the number who 
 travel with certificate from place to place on religious service is 
 very small. The number of family visits has also greatly 
 diminished ; and the occurrence of those unarranged-for seasons 
 
 * Four 'Lectures on the Rise, Progress, and Past Proceedings of the Society 
 of Friends in Great Britain, 108-110. 
 
 •f This Conference was called in November, 1903, by London Yesirly 
 Meeting, to consider the question of the Recording of Ministers, and was 
 presided over by John S. Rowntree. From very early times Friends have 
 believed it helpful to record on their minute books the bestowal by the 
 great Head of the Church, of a gift in the vocal Ministry. (See note by 
 J. S. R. in Journal Friends' Historical Society, n. 84.) This record does not 
 in any sense constitute an appointment, and is only made in the case of 
 those members who show unmistakable evidence of having been called to 
 this public service. The Conference heard many expressions of opinion as 
 to the helpfulness or otherwise of the practice of Recording, but did not feel 
 prepared to suggest any alteration. — [Editor.] 
 
 % Private Memoirs of B. and E. Seebohm (1873), 7- Benjamin Seebohm 
 was bom in Germany in 1797. Early in life he removed to England and 
 took up his residence at Bradford (Yorks.). Here, at the age of twenty- 
 three years, he first engaged in the vocal Ministry, to which service he 
 devoted himself unstintingly during the rest of his life, in this country and 
 in America. He edited the Journal of Stephen Grellet and Memoirs of 
 William Forster. He died at Luton in 1871, aged 73 years. — [Editor.] 
 
254 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 of silent religious waiting, ministry, and prayer, frequent at a 
 former period in the hours of social intercourse, has become 
 very uncommon. So, too, have spoken words of thanksgiving 
 before or after meals. 
 
 Our review of the Society's experience in regard to Gospel 
 Ministry, imperfect as it is, must not be entirely silent in regard 
 to three significant developments of the past half-century : — 
 
 (i) The rise and extension of the pastoral system amongst 
 Friends in the United States of America need not detain us, 
 because the extent of the movement and some of its more 
 remarkable featiures have been sufi&ciently set forth in the sixth 
 paper of last year's Symposium.* We agree with the author of 
 that paper in deeming the cardinal significance of the movement 
 to be the evidence it affords of the failure of the previously 
 existing Ministry to supply the spiritual requirements of the 
 Society, especially amongst the newly settled conununities in the 
 Western States. 
 
 (2) The spread of the First-day School work, a movement 
 still rapidly extending in this country, is a remarkable illustration 
 of the larger reception of the gift of teaching by a religious 
 community, and of the blessing both to teachers and taught 
 following the occupancy of the gift. The New Testament usually 
 ranks the gift of teaching below that of prophecy, but the two 
 gifts are closely aUied, and it is often hard to determine where 
 the one ends and the other begins. " Paul and Barnabas tarried 
 in Antioch, teaching and preaching." f Very few will question 
 the eminent value of the gift of sympathetic teaching conferred 
 upon the late William White, J of Birmingham, conspicuously 
 qualifying him for service in extending the Redeemer's Kingdom. 
 
 (3) The widely increased interest taken in Foreign Mission 
 work during the last thirty years is a very notable feature in 
 
 * Friend^ Quarterly Examiner, 1903, p. 550. 
 
 f Acts XV. 35. 
 
 { One of the most efficient pioneers of the Adult School Movement. 
 He was also an earnest worker among Friends, in the vocal ministry and in 
 other ways. He wrote Friends in Warwickshire in the seventeenth and 
 eighteenth centuries. Bom 1820. Died 1900. — [Editor.] 
 
GOSPEL MINISTRY IN THE SOCIETY. 255 
 
 the Society's recent history. In the days of Oliver Cromwell 
 a number of Friend preachers were actively engaged in Foreign 
 Mission service, as appears by the records of the early Yearly 
 Meetings at Skipton. These missionaries, both men and 
 women, penetrated into most of the countries of Europe, and 
 some even extended their journeys beyond its eastern limits. 
 The expedition of Mary Fisher to the camp of the Sultan Mahomet 
 at Adrianople has furnished material for picturesque narrative, 
 both in prose and verse. It must, however, be admitted that 
 there was but little apparent result from this missionary activity, 
 and in the course of a few years it subsided, to be followed by a 
 long interval in which but little direct effort was made by Friends 
 to spread the Gospel in non-Christian lands. Through a chain of 
 events, frequently recounted, which it is unnecessary here to 
 repeat, the Friends' Foreign Mission Association was founded in 
 1866. Since that date its work has been continually growing, 
 both in extent and importance, tUl, at the present time, it is 
 sustaining the labours of more than one hundred missionaries, 
 men and women, engaged in various forms of evangelistic service 
 in non-Christian populations. The general interest taken in the 
 work has steadily extended through the Society, so that the con- 
 tributions now raised for its furtherance exceed those subscribed 
 for any other denominational object. Children born among 
 Friends previous to 1870 heard very little about missionary 
 work in connection with the Society to which they belonged. 
 Now the Missionary Helpers' Union familiarises hundreds 
 of boys and girls with a knowledge of the Gospd labours 
 going on in China, Japan, India, Ceylon, Madagascar, Syria, 
 and Pemba. 
 
 Imperfect as is our sketch of the experience of the early Chris- 
 tian Church and of the Society of Friends in regard to Gospel Minis- 
 try, it has left us but little space to speak of details of rule or usage 
 affecting the Ministry at the present time. Whilst conscious 
 that to many readers the preceding pages wiU be but as a recital 
 of a thrice-told tale, we can hardly regret the space occupied 
 if it serve to clear our thoughts in regard to principles lying at the 
 
256 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 threshold of any useful consideration of questions of ministerial 
 arrangement or procedure ; for we concur in the opinion expressed 
 in the fifth paper of last year's S5nnposium : — " Until the Church 
 is convinced that gifts exist, it is useless to argue about arrange- 
 ments for their exercise I believe," continues 
 
 the writer, " that this tacit disbelief and consequent neglect of gifts 
 is a chief source of the weakness shown in our meetings for wor- 
 ship, of our failure to hold our members, and of our powerlessness 
 to impress the world." 
 
 What, then, are the salient lessons deducible from the pages 
 of past experience ? At the outset, one is impressed with 
 the similiarity between the experience of the Primitive Christians 
 and that of the Society of Friends. In both we find the Head of 
 the Church liberally bestowing spiritual gifts upon His followers. 
 The faithful preaching of the Gospel in the first century and in 
 the seventeenth proved alike instrumental in bringing sinners 
 to a saving knowledge of Christ. In both, when disciples had 
 been gathered into groups, the presence of the Spirit was known, 
 and the liberty which accompanies that holy presence. Human 
 infirmity was also present; but the Christian commimity knew 
 itself to be a priestly body possessing spiritual perceptions, and so 
 able to admonish its prophets. Order was shown to be the 
 handmaid of liberty, at Corinth in the first century and at Grace- 
 church Street in the seventeenth. The proceedings of Christian 
 communities must be subject to certain basal laws. All things 
 must be done decently and in order — all things must be done to 
 edifying. The spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets. 
 A strong presumption is thus established for the permanence 
 of the conditions enunciated in the New Testament regarding 
 spiritual gifts. One or two of these, like the gift of tongues, 
 have, for adequate reasons, passed away ; but the spiritual wants 
 of human nature continuing substantially the same from genera- 
 tion to generation, the weightier gifts of prophecy, teaching, 
 evangelisation, and shepherding are not superseded by time, 
 changes of civilisation, or by any legitimate development of 
 Church life or organisation. 
 
GOSPEL MINISTRY IN THE SOCIETY. 257 
 
 If we limit our view to a more strictly denominational stand- 
 point, the following can hardly be deemed disputable positions : — 
 
 (i) That the Society of Friends was chiefly gathered through 
 the strenuous labours of men and women believing that 
 they had been called to the Ministry of the Gospel by Christ Him- 
 self, and that their gift was to be exercised under the continual 
 anointing of His Spirit. 
 
 (2) That the upbuilding and organisation of the Society, 
 in the middle and later years of the seventeenth century, was 
 chiefly the work of its Public Friends, who devoted much time 
 and energy to its service.* 
 
 (3) When the number of Ministers lessened, and the visits 
 of the itinerant preachers became less frequent, the life and 
 numbers of the Society correspondingly declined. This decline, 
 it may be noted, went on simultaneously with a remarkable 
 development of itinerant preaching under the administration of 
 the Methodists. 
 
 (4) There is no evidence of any Friend congregation having 
 flourished for any considerable length of time, or having efficiently 
 
 * Throughout the seventeenth century nearly all the Public Friends 
 travelled " in the service of Truth." The Monthly Meetings signified 
 approval or disapproval of their service by granting or withholding certi- 
 ficates, in which the labourers might be styled " Elders," " Ministers," 
 or " Approved Ministers." By the payment of their expenses, by the 
 entering of their names in the books kept for the distribution of the Ministry, 
 by their seating in meeting, and in some other indirect ways, the recog- 
 nition and control of the Ministry by the Society in the first seventy 
 years of its history, was as real as, or probably more real than, when the 
 procedure of recognition became more formal after 1723. 
 
 The first Query ever asked by London Yearly Meeting (in the year 
 1682) was : " What Friends in the Ministry in their respective counties 
 departed this life since the last Yearly Meeting ? " In 1696, the corres- 
 ponding Query was the fifth, and ran : " How many Publick Friends dyed, 
 and when ? " 
 
 The recognition of Ministers, by whatever method it may be com- 
 passed, appears, like the laying-on of hands in the first century, ulti- 
 mately to rest on two far-reaching principles : — 
 
 (i) That a Christian Church gathered in the name of Christ possesses 
 spiritual functions qualifying it to judge of the validity of spiritual gifts ; 
 and that the congregation, and not the individual, must be the ultimate 
 determining body in regard to the exercise of vocal Ministry, in times of 
 congregational worship, (i Cor. xii. 28-31 ; xiv. 29-33.) 
 
 (2) That for the efficient discharge of the laborious and faith-testing 
 service of the Christian Ministry, men require tokens of human sympathy 
 and approval, as well as the sense of spiritual call to their work (Acts ix. 
 II, 17 ; xiii. 2, 3 ; xxviii. 15, etc.). 
 
 18 
 
258 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 fulfilled the objects of Church fellowship, in the absence of living 
 Gospel Ministry. 
 
 (5) When in recent years languishing congregations have 
 again flourished, it is found that they are those in which there 
 has been both the bestowal and the acceptance of spiritual gifts 
 qualifying for Gospel Ministry. 
 
 "The outstanding lesson of the London religious census," 
 says R. Mudie Smith, "is that the power of preaching is 
 undiminished."* 
 
 If, as appears, it is indisputable that a living Gospel Ministry 
 is still most intimately related to the lif e of a Chr istian community , 
 it must be the unperative duty of that community sedulously to 
 foster the sp iritual gifts co nferred on its members. By what 
 methods can this be done? The First-day School and Foreign 
 Mission work going on around us suggest an answer. Through 
 some generations, the exercise of the gifts of teaching and of 
 evangelisation towards those outside the Society's pale was in 
 abeyance ; but when the comnmnity awoke to its responsibility 
 in these directions, and prayed the Lord of the Harvest to send 
 out labourers, the labourers were forthcoming ; and the Society 
 found, and is still finding, through failure as well as through 
 success, the fitting methods for imparting religious teaching in 
 the Adult Schools, and for the evangelisation of the heathen. 
 
 It may have appeared to some that the immediate outcome 
 of the discussions on the Ministry in the York Conference and 
 in the Society's journals has been small and disappointing; 
 but this wiU not be the lasting result if we have reached a clearer 
 understanding of the conditions under which alone Christian 
 Ministry can flourish. One of these is its thankful acceptance by 
 the Christian community as a foremost means for the spread and 
 maintenanceof Christian truth. Individuals and congregations 
 need to be instant in prayer for the call and equipment of Gospel 
 labourers, and the service of these labourers requires constant 
 assistance by every legitimate method suggested by Scripture 
 and experience. The Society possesses in its Meetings on Ministry 
 * See The Religious Life of London, 7. 
 
GOSPEL MINISTRY IN THE SOCIETY. 259 
 
 and Oversight * a machinery which might do far more for the 
 nurture of the Ministry than it is now accomplishing. Wood- 
 brookef promises to become a truly helpful centre for the equip- 
 ment of labourers for diversified fields of social and religious 
 service. The general iaterest that has been excited, and the 
 numerous modifications of usage which have been proposed, 
 may be hailed as signs that increased thought is being directed 
 to this question of cardinal moment. Nor need we be discouraged 
 if some of these suggestions be crude, and unsuited to meet the 
 needs of our time. Various proposals, seemingly intended to 
 belittle the status of the Ministry, appear to the present writer 
 almost the reverse of what the requirements of the day demand. 
 From the influence of causes on which there is no time now to 
 dwell, the ideal of the Ministry amongst Friends has become 
 too contracted. We do not question that there may be a right 
 call for some whose vocal service is practically restricted to one 
 meeting for worship weekly. It is probably in right ordering 
 that some men are primarily merchants, legislators, magistrates, 
 total abstinence advocates, authors, and what not — and in a very 
 secondary sense Gospel Ministers ; but is there not a crying need 
 for men and women to whom the Christian Ministry, in their 
 own country, shall be as distinctively the first object of their 
 lives, as is evangelistic work to our missionaries in China or 
 Madagascar ? Do we not need more of the spirit which led Paul 
 to tell his Roman correspondents, " I glorify my ministry " ?J 
 Would it not be right, in speaking of fields of future service to 
 those at school and college, to name the home Ministry in Great 
 Britain and Ireland, as well as adult-school teaching, foreign 
 tnission labour, magisterial, municipal, or parliamentary life, 
 
 * The " Meetings on Ministry and Oversight " were given up in 1906. 
 The work formerly done by these meetings is now performed by committees. 
 — [Editor.] 
 
 ■f The Woodbrooke Settlement for Religious and Social Study was 
 founded in 1903. It aims at giving Friends and those associated with them 
 " the opportunity for more fully qualifying themselves, spiritually, intel- 
 lectually, and experimentally, for any service to which they may feel called." 
 — [Editor.] 
 
 + Rom. xi. 13, R.v. 
 
260 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 as a sphere into which their feet may be rightly led by the con- 
 straining love of Christ ? The Society should get more work out 
 of its Ministers than it is now doing — ^more of itinerant service — 
 more of the visitation of meetings — ^more of teaching, " publicly 
 and from house to house . . . repentance towards God, 
 and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ " after the manner of 
 Edward Burrough, Stephen Crisp, or Benjamin Seebohm, as illus- 
 trated in passages cited in previous pages. And who should do 
 this work ? Very largely men and women under forty years of 
 age is the answer that comes to us from the past. So far as any 
 present usages in regard to recognition and the issue of certifi- 
 cates are curtailing the services of the young and vigorous, they 
 urgently demand amendment. And whilst it would be wrong to 
 conceal the terms of discipleship, or to disguise the fact that this 
 is not a pathway to earthly wealth, it is incumbent on the Society 
 to make more generous and efficient provision for defraying 
 all the out-of-pocket expenses of its labourers than has often been 
 done. We do not grudge the Foreign Mission service any of the 
 many thousands of pounds it needs and obtains, but should like 
 to see, say, a modest thousand pounds spent in this country, 
 in discharging the expenses of oiu- Ministers — so giving heed to 
 many Scriptural exhortations, and to such an admonition as this 
 which comes to us from the Friends of the Cromwellian era : — 
 " That care be taken for the families and goods of such as are 
 called forth into the ministry, or [who] are imprisoned for the 
 Truth's sake ; that no creatures be lost for want of the 
 creatures."* 
 
 But the temptation to enter into the details of methods must 
 be resisted. Many of the practical requirements of Friends in 
 regard to the Ministry have been well set forth by J. J. Dymond 
 in his little bookf already referred to, and in several articles 
 which have appeared lately. | Could we but master the 
 
 * Letters of Early Friends, 278. 
 
 ■f Gospel Ministry in the Society of Friends. 
 
 X See " The Church and the Missionary," and companion papers. 
 The Friends Quarterly Examiner, 1903, 546, etc. 
 
GOSPEL MINISTRY IN THE SOCIETY. 261 
 
 principles that underlie the institution of the Christian Ministry, 
 and seek to give effect to them, so far as this depends on human 
 action, working under Heavenly guidance, details would arrange 
 themselves. The ability to adapt means to ends, in the spiritual 
 as in the natural world, " cometh forth from the Lord of 
 Hosts, which is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in effectual 
 working." 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE WORK AND MAINTENANCE OF THE VOCAL 
 MINISTRY.* 
 
 TPHE early history of the Society of Friends is remarkable 
 for having illustrated, three generations before the rise 
 of Methodism, the great power of an itinerant Ministry. The 
 Society can hardly be said to have taken root in London before 
 1653 or 1654, when the visits of some of the north country 
 evangelists, especially Edward Burrough and Francis Howgill, 
 led to such a great ingathering that, in spite of the terrible per- 
 secution which recurred again and again in the ensuing thirty 
 years, it seems to be well established that there were not fewer 
 than ten thousand Frien ds in London in 1678. f 
 
 In the later years of Fox's life he repeatedly stirred up his 
 brethren in the Ministry to unremitting labour in the spreading of 
 the truth. J It is observable that in 1695, six years after the 
 passing of the Toleration Act, the Yearly Meeting issued a strong 
 recommendation in the same direction, viz : — 
 
 " This Meeting desires and hopes that you, whom the Lord 
 hath gifted with a pubUc testimony for His name and truth wiU, 
 in this day of liberty, be diligent to visit the heritage of God in 
 their Meetings ; and, more especially, those least frequented." 
 
 For many years after this, the number of religious visits paid 
 to the meetings of Friends continued to be very large. In his 
 
 * Portions of a paper published in the Friends' Quarterly Examiner, 
 April, 1897, under the title of "Meetings on Ministry and Oversight: their 
 place and functions." 
 
 t London Friend^ Meetings, 32. 
 
 % See George Fox's Epistles, Tuke's edition, 27, 34, y^i 204, 208, etc. 
 
 262 
 
WORK AND MAINTENANCE OF VOCAL MINISTRY. 263 
 
 lectures upon the history of Friends in Bristol and Somerset, 
 William Tanner says the number of religious visits received 
 from Friends from a distance was very great. Jacob P. Sturge 
 examined a book of a Gloucestershire meeting, in which was kept 
 an account of the charges for the horses of Friends who came 
 to visit, and found the number averaged one a fortnight for many 
 years.* William Tanner estimated the number who visited 
 Bristol to have been at least as large. The Ministers' horses in 
 that city ate 36I bushels of oats in fifteen months, apparently 
 a usud quantity. In Skeats's history of the Free Churches we 
 have evidence in the same direction from an historian who was 
 not himself a Friend. Writing of the year 1713, he says, 
 " The Society w as kept in vigorous life by the mission ary spirit of 
 ife members. Like George Fox, the preachers of the denomma- 
 tion travelled throughout the length and breadth of the land, 
 and in such a sense that the Quakers may be justly described as 
 the founders of the first home missionary organizations." f 
 
 William Thistlethwaite saysj that at the commencement of 
 the eighteenth century the itinerant activity of the Ministry was 
 very great. He goes on to observe that in 1700, fully two-thirds 
 of all the meetings of Friends had acknowledged Ministers residing 
 within their limits. By the middle of the eighteenth century 
 the number of ministerial visits was fast diminishing, yet a cor- 
 respondent informs us that in 1748, sixteen Ministers, three being 
 Americans, visited Brighouse and Hightown Meetings in York- 
 shire. In the nineteen years, 1740-59, 147 ministering Friends 
 visited these meetings. 
 
 There can be no doubt that it was by strenuous, sustained 
 effort that the Society of Friends was first gathered, and that it 
 was by a continuance of the same class of evangelistic labour 
 in the visitation of families and congregations that it was con- 
 solidated and built up, so far as this was accomplished, in the 
 
 * Three Lectures on the Early History of the Society of Friends in Bristol 
 and Somersetshire^ 91. 
 
 f History of the Free Churches of England, 210. 
 
 t Four Lectures, no. 
 
264 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 years succeeding the Revolution of 1688. Hence the visitation of 
 congregations is in entire harmony with the usages of the Society 
 from the earliest times. Let us look at this duty of congre- 
 gational visitation in the light of recent experience. 
 
 When the Friends' First-day Schools sprang up, fifty years 
 ago, the appointment of teachers to different classes and the 
 provision of substitutes for absentees became the constant 
 business of superintendents and of teachers' meetings. In these 
 Schools, as elsewhere, it is not always easy to get the right man 
 in the right place, but the inadvisability of leaving Schools to take 
 care of themselves has been deemed self-evident. The most 
 successful teachers will, no doubt, train their classes not to depend 
 upon them for every week's teaching ; but speaking broadly, the 
 First-day Schools do aim at, and secure, a suitable distribution 
 of teachers to scholars. So, too, in most of the Friends' mission 
 meetings, the presence of readers or speakers is almost always 
 arranged for beforehand. But the exercise of similar care as 
 respects Friends' meetings for worship has not obtained, to the 
 same extent at any rate, of late times. And yet it would be strange 
 if these gatherings were exceptions to conditions found important 
 elsewhere. It is not our intention to suggest that an Adult School 
 and a Friends' meeting for worship stand exactly on the same 
 platform in relation to the importance of the presence of any 
 particular person. The constitution of a School would seem to 
 involve the idea of persons needing to be taught, and of a person 
 able to teach. A meeting for worship does not necessarily carry 
 with it this idea. It is a glorious feature of the worship of the 
 New Covenant that it is not dependent upon the presence of any 
 humanly ordained person, or upon any local sanctity. But an 
 appeal to facts shows that congregational worship, like all human 
 institutions, has its conditions. Some of these are clearly 
 enunciated in Scripture. The gathgrin^ "^^? t ^^ }J! i ^^ ^^^^ of 
 (^hrfst. Again, all things must be " done decently and in order." 
 Friends through many generations have rightly insisted upon 
 punctuality, regularity in attendance, and non-drowsiness, as 
 amongst other conditions for having good meetings. So, too, is the 
 
WORK AND MAINTENANCE OF VOCAL MINISTRY. 265 
 
 orderly distribution of preachers. If, as we see is the fact, the Lord 
 Jesus Christ has in some congregations bestowed gifts of utterance 
 upon many of the members, whilst in others there are few or none 
 possessing these gifts, it is unreasonable to suppose that these 
 congregations are so differently constituted that it can be in 
 right ordering for some habitually to sit in silence, while others 
 rarely or never do so. And here we have the helpful guidance 
 of facts. So far as we know, no instance exists of any considerable- 
 sized meeting navmg rio urished for a lo ng period wfaenHablWliffly' 
 hela m silence. Tliere are very man5rSses''ol'nreefings''so~ReT3" 
 mivmg dbciyeil and died out. When, therefore, we find one con- 
 gregation having many Ministers, and others with few or none, 
 we may reverently appropriate our Lord's words and say : — 
 " Why even of yourselves judge ye not " that the lack of one 
 congregation is to be supplied from the abundance of the other ? 
 It wa s when the number of Ministers declined that the Friends' 
 meetmgs declined. It was when the itinerant Ministry lessene d 
 m nuinbef' ^ '9!fltl f requency that the life of the Society as a whole 
 lessened. Thus, then7tECTe is a'^tirMig concurrence ol'testimony 
 that the distribution of the Ministry to meet the requirements 
 of its congregations is an urgent duty of a religious body modelled 
 on the principles of the Society of Friends. And it must be 
 admitted that this duty is now but imperfectly carried out. A 
 few months* ago the present writer heard verbal reports given 
 at a Monthly Meeting of the condition of its congregations, by 
 which it incidentally transpired that on the previous day three 
 meetings with upwards of one hundred worshippers, including a 
 number of children, had been held in silence. The next First-day 
 twelve or fifteen Ministers were present at a meeting, about 
 thirty miles distant, which the writer attended. 
 
 From an early period in the reign of Charles II., the Public 
 Friends resident in London met at ten o'clock every second-day 
 morning to attend to various matters of Society business.* The 
 censorship of manuscripts which it was proposed to print 
 apparently occupied more time than anything else, in the last years 
 * See London Friends' Meetings, 339. 
 
266 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 of the century. In addition to this, the Ministers present deter- 
 mined, in outline, at least, on the meetings which each would attend 
 in the ensuing week. Ministers not present sent notes intimating 
 their intentions to Ellis Hookes, the Recording Clerk. Those 
 who were present signed the" First-day Meetings Book " person- 
 ally or by proxy, placing their names opposite the meeting to be 
 attended. The Ministers met again early on First-day morning, 
 and after a brief time of devotion, walked or rode to the different 
 meetings. Saddled horses were ready for those going to the more 
 distant places. The early records contain very few entries of 
 women's names. The Second-day Morning Meeting consisted 
 exclusively of men Ministers. The aim appears to have been to 
 secure the presence of at least two Ministers for each congregation. 
 On special occasions, as at Whitsuntide, when the Yearly Meeting 
 was always in session, the number of Ministers attending each 
 of the London meetings was much larger ; there are then often as 
 many as six or eight names down for the principal congregations. 
 At other times the number of Ministers available seems frequently 
 to have been too small for the number of meetings ; and especially 
 as respects the more distant places, the appointments to attend 
 were generally small. Meetings as far north as Hitchin, and south 
 as Rochester, are amongst the places mentioned in these books. 
 The Ministers present at one meeting in London in the morning 
 frequently changed over to another in the afternoon. Those 
 who were at the Bull and Mouth,* for instance, in the morning 
 wotild go to Devonshire House* in the afternoon, whilst those 
 
 * The Bull and Mouth meeting house, the first possessed by Friends in 
 London, was part of an ancient inn in Aldersgate Street. Howgill and 
 Burrough hired the room, which would hold i,ooo people, in 1654. The 
 Great Fire destroyed the building, which was however re-erected and used 
 until 1740. Devonshire House was originally part of the princely mansion 
 of the Cavendishes, of whom Friends leased certain portions when the Fire 
 had left them without a meeting-place. The beautUuUy decorated rooms 
 were used until 1678, when pressing need arose for increased accommodation, 
 and the purchase of Sir Thomas More's old residence of Crosby Hall was 
 considered. Finally a portion of the Devonshire estate was leased and on 
 this a meeting house was built at a cost of i6ya. The leeise became Friends' 
 property in 1766, and twenty-three years later the Dolphin Inn was pur- 
 chased, which admitted of two large meeting houses being erected near to the 
 then existing one. This block of buildings, with later improvements and 
 additions, constitutes the present Devonshire House premises. — [Editor.] 
 
WORK AND MAINTENANCE OF VOCAL MINISTRY. 267 
 
 who had been at Devonshire House in the morning might be found 
 at the Bull and Mouth in the afternoon. Similar appointments, 
 but usually smaller, were made for the week-day meetings. 
 When approaching marriages and funerals were known of, memo- 
 randa to that effect are entered in the books, with appointments 
 to attend the same. For instance, on the 5th of 2nd month, 
 1713, there are brief memoranda of two funerals, " Wapping — 
 a burial." Robert Curtis and two others to attend. 
 " Horsley-down — a burial on 7th day." G. Chalkley and three 
 others to attend. Again, " 1710, 3rd month 30th, marriage at 
 Devonshire House at 9 of the clock " (the usual hour for marriages), 
 William Penn to attend. 
 
 These provisions will, however, be more clearly understood 
 if we reproduce one of the actual entries. (See p. 268.) 
 
 The existing minutes of the Morning Meeting* date from 
 the year 1673 : any previous to that date may have been made 
 upon sheets of paper, and lost. The earliest of the " First-day 
 Morning Books " existing — ^ruled folios sixteen inches by eleven 
 — ^is that of 1699. f Previous records have 'perished. The system 
 itself appears to have been organised about 1675, and probably 
 was gradually matured as time passed. There are numerous 
 entries relative to it in the minutes of the Morning Meeting : e.g. — 
 
 " At a meeting at Edward Mans, ye 17th day of ye 3rd mo., 1675, 
 it is desired that all Friends in and about the city, that have a public 
 testimony for God or Ministry, do meet with the brethren on every 
 First-day and Second-day morning when they can ; otherwise to 
 send a note to the meetings, signifying what meetings they intend 
 to be at on the First-days." 
 
 Six years later there occurs the following minute : 
 
 " At a Second-day or Morning Meeting, the i6th. 3rd, 168 1, it is 
 the desire and advice of this meeting, that the Friends in and about 
 
 * See page I49». 
 
 •f An additional volume of this series, presumably, is now in Friends' 
 Library, 142, N. Sixteenth Street, Philadelphia. It is entitled First Days 
 Meetings Supplied by Friends in the Ministry in and about London, 1682. 
 A written copy of this, with photographic reproduction of several pages of 
 the original, is in the Reference Library, Devonshire House, London. — 
 [Editor.] 
 
268 
 
 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 1699. 
 
 Brewers Hall 
 Devonshire House 
 Gracechurch Street 
 Horselydowne 
 
 Parke 
 
 Peel 
 
 Ratcliff 
 
 Savoy- 
 
 Westminster 
 
 Wheeler Street . . 
 
 Longacre 
 
 FIRST 
 Morning Meetings, 
 
 DAY. 
 
 Afternoon Meetings. 
 
 Benjamin Bangs 
 Richard Thomas 
 Richard Hinckson 
 
 John Feddeman 
 Richard Ashbye 
 Joseph Rogers 
 
 John Gratton 
 Anthony Sharpe 
 Ambrose Rigg 
 
 Peter Fearon 
 Jonathan Free 
 Samuel Overton 
 George Bewley 
 
 Robert Collier 
 Joseph Baines 
 John Tompson 
 George Knipe 
 
 Nicholas Gates 
 Richard Vivers 
 Luke Howard 
 
 Edward Edwards 
 John Banks 
 Thomas Aldam 
 George Whitehead 
 
 Wm. Hornould 
 
 John Gratton 
 Ambrose Rigg 
 
 Samuel Hunt 
 Thomas Cooke 
 Joshua Middleton 
 
 Benjamin Bangs 
 Richard Ashbye 
 
 Joseph Baines 
 John Tompson 
 George Knippe 
 Thomas Chauckley 
 
 Richard Thomas 
 Peter Fearon 
 George Bewley 
 John Killburne 
 
 Samuel Overton 
 Jonathan Free 
 Robert Curtiss 
 John Banks 
 
 Nicholas Gates 
 Richard Vivers 
 Luke Howard 
 
 Robert Collier 
 Thomas Aldam 
 Richard Hinckson 
 George Whitehead 
 
 Jonathan Feddeman 
 Joseph Rogers 
 Anthony Sharpe 
 
 William Warren 
 John Leech 
 Thomas Bevin 
 
 Croydon. 
 John Kennerly 
 Rt. Soothworth 
 
 Debtford. 
 Daniel Monroe 
 John Bowater 
 Thomas Clarke 
 
 Enfield. 
 G. Chalkley 
 Mary Gulson 
 
 Cobham. 
 Theod. Eccleston 
 
 Wanstead. 
 William Penn 
 Thomas Pennick 
 
 Newington. 
 Richard Davies 
 Wm. Fallowfield 
 Robt. Atkinson 
 
 Wansworth. 
 Daniel Flaxman 
 Joseph Nott 
 
 Hammersmith. 
 George Bowles 
 Wm. Bingley 
 
 Mill Bin. 
 Humph.WoUrich 
 
 Hunsden. 
 Jon. Lee 
 
 Kingstone. 
 Tho. Knappe 
 
 Monthly Meeting 
 to-morrow. 
 
 Notes. 
 
 The signature of William Penn on this sheet is apparently an autograph. 
 Between 50 and 60 persons are named in this week's record, amongst whom 
 there is but one woman. 
 
 There was a register for week-day as well as First-day meetings. 
 
WORK AND MAINTENANCE OF VOCAL MINISTRY. 269 
 
 this City, or any others who have public testimony, and shall have 
 it upon them at any time to visit the adjacent meetings near the 
 City upon the First-days, that they come and give good notice 
 on the seventh day, or any other day before, at EUis [the Recording 
 Clerk's] his chamber, by writing of their names and what meeting 
 they intended to be at next day, that, as much as may be, those 
 meetings may be equally supplied so as there may not be several at 
 one meeting and none at another." 
 
 The Morning Meeting at various times reviewed its origin, 
 and the purposes for which it had been estabhshed. For 
 instance, in 1697, 11 mo. 31, we find an entry : — 
 
 " Two papers of George Fox's relating to keeping meetings quiet 
 when such as Friends have not satisfaction with, or have joined 
 with the separation, comes to impose their preaching — referred to 
 the Six Weeks Meeting to take care therein. John Vaughton and 
 Theodor Eccleston to carry the said papers thither. 
 
 " Another epistle read of George Fox's to this meeting to advise 
 against many ministering Friends going to one meeting and leaving- 
 other meetings neglected or not well supplied. Tis ordered the said 
 paper be read again this day week in the Morning Meeting and be 
 recorded in this book." [This apparently was not done.] 
 
 In the same year there is another interesting minute. The 
 19th of 5mo., 1697 : — 
 
 " This meeting being under a sense of the need there is that 
 some method be considered that the Country Meetings that are 
 at a small distance be duly supplied, and the First-day Morning 
 Meeting observed about or before the 8th hour, as general as may 
 be, by the Friends then in town, that Friends may have oppor- 
 tunity to dispose themselves to the most service of Truth, both in 
 City and County. Whereupon it was proposed as a conveniency 
 for the well supply of the Country Meetings that the Friends of this 
 meeting might be half-an-hour together at the end of the Meeting^ 
 for Sufferings, whereby Friends might understand each other's minds 
 more fully. The further consideration hereof and well settling of 
 somewhat in this matter is further referred." 
 
 It will be remembered that there was at this time no formal 
 system for the " recording " or "acknowledging" of Ministers.* 
 The object of recording was largely effected in an incidental, 
 
 * See pp. 253»., zs^n. 
 
270 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 and almost automatic way. The giving of a certificate to a 
 travelling preacher by his Monthly Meeting, and the entering 
 of the names upon the " First-day Morning Books " in London 
 and Bristol constituted virtual recognition. As was inevitable, 
 difficulties arose with reference to the right of persons to put down 
 their names in these books, many indications of which can be 
 traced in the old minute books. Whilst the Morning Meeting 
 evidently kept a tight hand over the proceedings of its members, 
 and was especially strict as respects the women preachers,* the 
 principle appears to have been maintained that the Monthly 
 Meeting was the body which ultimately determined whether 
 a Friend was at liberty to preach or not. Persistence in doing 
 so contrary to its judgment involved the liability to disownment. 
 Considerab le sums of money were paid to constables for excluding 
 persons from Friends' meetmgs m Lonaon, who went there" 
 mtending to speak whien'^l^^^ 
 
 In the later years of thereignof George I., the MommgMeexmg 
 appears to have taken more authority upon itself in determining 
 its membership than was approved by the Yearly Meeting, which 
 in 1723 ruled : — 
 
 " It is the unanimous agreement of this meeting that it does not 
 belong to the Momirig Meeting, or any other meeting of ministers, 
 to disown any minister or other person, but that the sole right of so 
 doing belongs to Monthly, Quarterly, and Half-yearly or Yearly 
 Meetings. And that no person's name from and after the 8th day 
 of seventh month next be entered in the Morning Meeting Book 
 of Ministering Friends as a minister, till he or she produces a certi- 
 ficate from the Monthly or Quarterly Meeting to which he or she 
 shall belong, "f 
 
 * At a Second Day's Morning Meeting the loth — 1700. 
 
 "This meeting finding that it is a hurt to Truth for women Friends 
 to take up too much time as some do in our public meetings, when 
 several pubUc and serviceable men Friends are present, and are by them 
 prevented In their services. It's therefore advised that the women Friends 
 should be tenderly cautioned against taking up so much time in our 
 mixed public meetings. Benjamin Sealing to give a copy of this minute 
 to Sarah Plumley and Margt. Munro, for them to communicate to other 
 women Friends, and that it may be prevented for the future." 
 
 f See Journal Friends' Historical Society, i. 22, for account of William 
 Gibson, who made the appeal which resulted in the Yearly Meeting's decision, 
 just quoted. — [Editor.] 
 
WORK AND MAINTENANCE OF VOCAL MINISTRY. 27I 
 
 We have devoted some space to these details of ancient 
 arrangements for the distribution of the Ministry, beHeving 
 that readers will not have found them tedious. The main facts 
 have been before published, but there is an aroma about the 
 original records that is lost in a sununary of their contents. 
 They are pregnant with suggestion, and that not alone in their 
 denominational aspect. The population of London was about 
 ha1f-a-" lillion at the close o f the seventeenth century. What 
 a notable factor in its religious life must the ten or twelve Friend 
 congregations have been, with their band of preachers suitably 
 distributed amongst them every Sunday, thus securing frequent 
 variety and change in the Ministry ! It helps the reader of Leslie's 
 Snake in the Grass to understand the note of alarm which runs 
 through its malevolent pages. And how interestingly do these 
 Friend Ministers' plans of the Stuart and Hanoverian era antedate 
 the Methodist plans which now cover so large a part of England 
 and Wales ! It is sometimes implied, if not said, that it exhibits 
 some lack of spirituaUty for a Friend to allow his name to be put 
 down on a plan to attend a certain meeting at an appointed 
 hour. Evidently this was not felt by George Whitehead, William 
 Penn, Ambrose Rigg, and Samuel Bownas ; and If they were not 
 conscious of it, we may well suspect the validity of our scruple. 
 It is urged that to plan out the location of Ministers on a future 
 day is to interfere with the disposal of them by the Holy Ghost. 
 But is this really the case ? The wording of the minute of 1723, 
 which speaks of the dispersing of Ministers " according to their con- 
 cern or freedom," is significant. Probably in nine cases out of ten, 
 a Minister has no special drawing to one meeting above another — 
 he has a freedom to go where his friends think him the most 
 wanted. In the case of his having a " concern " for one meeting, 
 way would be made for his giving effect to such an apprehension of 
 duty. 
 
 The difficulties which were felt, five or six generations ago, 
 in determining who were the Public Friends entitled to enter 
 their names on the First-day Meeting Books have their signifi- 
 cance in relation to the existing arrangements for the Recording 
 
272 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 of Ministers. It is easy to criticise these arrangements : their 
 actual working is often awkward and capricious. But the gist 
 of the question is : — ^What better plan can be substituted for 
 them ? The religious meetings of the Society of Friends are 
 almost the only examples of congregational worship remaining, 
 where the apostolic liberty, " Ye may all prophesy," is still the 
 rule. This fact points to propensities in human nature which 
 make it extremely difficult to maintain the " liberty of prophesy- 
 ing," but liberty is worth so much that its price must not be 
 grudged. There must somewhere be an authority which shall 
 determine whether a person is called to be a preacher or not. That 
 individual judgment is liable to be greatly mistaken has been 
 continually illustrated throughout the history of Friends. Many 
 men carry within their breasts something of the spirit of the 
 Papacy ; hence we see that the highest claims to spiritual guidance 
 are often associated with a stubborn indisposition to accept the 
 judgment of wiser and more experienced men. In lands where 
 there is no statute law in force, lynch law grows up. And as it is 
 in States, so it is in the denominations as respects their 
 Ministry. My readers wUl generally concur in the position that 
 the congregation where a preacher resides, or the group of 
 congregations, that is, the Monthly Meeting, must ultimately 
 determine whether he has a valid call to the Ministry or not. 
 If this could be done in a way more simple, and by a machinery 
 that worked more easily than that now in vogue, it would be a 
 satisfaction to many, and might be a cause of strength to the 
 Church. The experience of the eighteenth century, however, 
 assures us that the earlier methods were not unattended by 
 grave difi&culties ; and it would, we believe, be easy now to make 
 changes which would weaken the Society in a direction where it 
 is already weak. Whilst Friends have been eminently successful 
 in promoting the growth of individual characters of much strength 
 and distinctive excellence, their organisation has been and is 
 weak for aggressive evangelistic work, and even for perpetuating 
 their own polity. This side of their history has been a com- 
 mentary on the proverb, " What is everybody's business is 
 
WORK AND MAINTENANCE OF VOCAL MINISTRY. 273 
 
 nobody's b usiness." Hence we view with some apprehension 
 proposals winch tend to make less definite the responsibilities 
 of the Christian Minister in the Society of Friends. We believe, 
 on the other hand, that most of our Ministers would find their 
 Ministry promoted, directly or indirectly, by having more 
 frequently to occupy assigned posts of service. Israel was not 
 happy in the days when every man did that which was right in his 
 own eyes. And so it is in the spiritual Israel now. We ne ed, t_Qj 
 rec ognise as a spiritual end nwrn^p f fj^p famUj ^for organisat ion ^ 
 No people illustrate this better than Friends themselvies, outside 
 their meeting houses. In the walks of philanthropy, in the 
 service of Bible, Peace, Anti-Slavery, Total Abstinence, Howard 
 or Arbitration Societies we place definite duties upon cer- 
 tain persons, and hold them responsible for their due discharge. 
 We believe a similar feeling towards the Society of Friends itself 
 was far stronger amongst the preachers in the reign of Queen 
 Anne than in that of Queen Victoria, and that it must exist in 
 every organisation that accomplishes much real work. When 
 Wesley and Whitefield were evangelising England, the latter 
 appeared to be the greater prophet of the two ; but his work has 
 been ephemeral compared with that of his friend. John Wesley 
 organised his adherents, and his influence grows in volume daily. 
 Through his classes and his system of local preachers, he being 
 dead still speaketh. In former times, sermons exhorting Friends 
 to faithfulness sometimes wound up with the declaration that if 
 these counsels were accepted and acted upon, " jhe Churc |}„^o^d 
 arise fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible. 
 
 with, banners ." When these poetical words of the Canticles 
 have fallen on our ears, have we reflected on their central thought, 
 that in the army of the Prince of Peace both the soldiers and the 
 officers must occupy their appointed places ? Here lies the great 
 difference between an undisciplined horde, and a disciplined army. 
 
 We must now hasten on to the other branch of our subject : 
 the provision for defraying the expenses of the Ministry. 
 
 Whilst the general care of the meetings for worship in London, 
 and the arrangements for the distribution of the Ministry were, 
 
 19 
 
274 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 two centuries ago, vested in the Morning Meeting, the duty of 
 defraying expenses of Ministers devolved upon the " Six Weeks 
 Meeting." 
 
 " The wants of country ministers, labouring in or passing through 
 London were carefuUy attended to during their stay in town ; sums 
 of money for their benefit being handed to certain Friends by the 
 Meeting of Twelve, [a sub-committee of the Six Weeks Meeting] 
 ■ without requiring an account.' "* 
 
 A great deal of space in the early minute books is occupied 
 with business relating to the horses of travelling Friends. In 
 those days Friends kept a number of the London inns, at 
 which the horses stopped, whilst the riders were usually entertained 
 at private houses. After the establishment of the Friends' 
 Workhouse, in Clerkenwell, the stables of that institution were 
 used for the horses of Ministers. In 1706 there is a record of a 
 gift of a horse, saddle, and bridle, together with £10, for the keep 
 of the horse for the use of Public Friends. Two years later the 
 bills for horse-keep seem to have amounted to about £90 a year. 
 In 1713 there is an entry of £6 spent in buying a mare for the use 
 of Ministers. 
 
 From several causes the provision for the payment of expenses 
 in connection with ministerial service has not latterly received 
 the attention which it did in former times, and which it deserves. 
 The decline in the number of ministerial visits has allowed the 
 machinery which provided for the pa3ntnent of their expenses, to 
 grow rusty. Evidence to this effect reaches one on all hands, f 
 Friends have not yet quite realised the alteration which the spread 
 of the railway system has brought about. Formerly, the travelling 
 Minister set out on horse-back, and was absent for weeks, or even 
 
 * London Friends' Meetings, 126. 
 
 ■f It was recently remarked to the writer, by one who had travelled in 
 the service of truth, " In some meetings the Friends do not even think of 
 the matter of expenses." Whilst this paper has been in course of pre- 
 paration, a Friend thankfully reported the favoured time he had enjoyed in 
 having accepted an invitation to a large and wealthy meeting, but added, 
 " As nothing was said about my expenses, my means will not allow of my 
 accepting many such invitations." A correspondent in a distant part of 
 England writes, " There is one meeting of well-to-do Friends which, at 
 their invitation, I have repeatedly visited, each time costing me 3s. 6d. or 
 
WORK AND MAINTENANCE OF VOCAL MINISTRY. 275 
 
 months, passing from one place to another, lodging at one Friend's 
 house after another, and little, or no expenditure was involved 
 beyond that of provision for himself and his horse. 
 
 The Yearly Meeting has laid down with sufi&cient clearness 
 the general principle which should regulate the arrangements 
 for the pa5mient of expenses. J 
 
 It is, we believe, the best plan for the travelling expenses of 
 all labourers to be defrayed by the Society, and that those whose 
 ■circumstances allow of it shall, if so disposed, return their expenses 
 by way of subscriptions. There is something invidious and 
 even discouraging where the expenses of fellow labourers are 
 <iefrayed by the Society in one case and not in the other. 
 The area providing the funds for these expenses should be 
 •sufficiently large. Some meetings are too poor to bear any 
 expenses of the character referred to. Perhaps in most cases a 
 •Quarterly Meeting fund, with local correspondents for making 
 the required disbursements, would prove the most convenient 
 arrangement. 
 
 Much observation has led the writer to see how large an 
 influence this matter of expenses has in determining the extent 
 and direction of Christian service. There are one or two special 
 temptations connected with it against which Friends require to 
 be on their guard. One is a distorted idea that what is called 
 the " freedom of Gospel Ministry " is promoted by not paying 
 travelling expenses. We believe this is an entire mistake, 
 and that there is in reality a great democratic principle 
 involved in securing for the Church the services of all its 
 members, irrespective of any qualification through the 
 pBSsession. of property or otherwise. Again, there is always 
 
 more. Not once has a farthing been offered me, nor, of course, have 
 I ever asked. I pay willingly, but for all that, it is not right ! To more 
 than a few, I believe, such demands are prohibitive of service." As Trea- 
 surer to York M. M., the writer has lately made a payment, through the 
 Recording Clerk in London, for expenses of an American visitor, not 
 (defrayed when in this district ; one, it was understood, of numerous omissions 
 of the same character. 
 
 J Christian Discipline of the Religious Society of Friends, ii. 25. 
 
276 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 in connection with this subject the liability to the presence 
 of selfish motives. It was the complaint of WiUiam Rogers- 
 and some dissentient Friends in the seventeenth century, that 
 they were called upon to subscribe as much for " the service 
 of Truth," as they paid in tithes before they were Friends.* In 
 our own time, it has, we believe, sometimes been urged in favour 
 of the Friends' denomination, that it was the cheapest. This is^ 
 surely a most unworthy position to assume, and indeed one that 
 is not true. When " the people called Quakers " arose in the days- 
 of the Commonwealth, and organised themselves as a Christian 
 community, they had before them the ideal of a Society, all the 
 members of which should be priests, and in which, therefore, there 
 would be no place for a sacerdotal order. But, as has before been 
 shown, they aspired to be a Society founded on Scriptural 
 principles — ^illustrating " primitive Christianity revived," in 
 William Penn's phrase — and they recognised that there would be 
 of&ce-bearers, persons possessing differing spiritual gifts, and 
 bearing different names. The possessors of these gifts were, by 
 virtue of their spiritual endowment, under the strongest obliga- 
 tion to occupy therewith, as good stewards of the manifold grace 
 of God. This necessarily involved large sacrifices of time, money,, 
 position and inclination. A faith demanding personal conse- 
 cration, and protesting against the endeavour to do the service 
 of God by proxy, cannot be worthily held by the covetous or the 
 self-seeking. 
 
 It will probably be said by some who read these pages, that 
 the Society of Friends is now poor in men, able and wiUing to 
 devote themselves to the service of God's people. This may be 
 so — ^but what is the remedy ? For the Church to ask " the Lord 
 of the harvest, that He send forth labourers into His harvest." 
 If the asking be sincere, it will carry with it the willingness to go 
 if sent, and to promote the service of others. How remarkably 
 has this prayer been answered in the last thirty years as respects 
 the Foreign Mission field ! Queen Victoria had ruled for half of 
 her memorable reign before the Society of Friends had done 
 
 * See p. 161. 
 
WORK AND MAINTENANCE OF VOCAL MINISTRY. 277 
 
 :anything to speak of in the work of Foreign Missions. To day 
 there are very few denominations which, in proportion to their 
 numbers, are doing more, either in the amount of their contribu- 
 tions, or the number of their labourers. With so remarkable an 
 illustration wrought before our eyes of the faithfulness of God 
 in owning prayer and blessing the use of fitting methods for 
 promoting the extension of the Redeemer's kingdom abroad, 
 why should we doubt His care for the needs of the Church at 
 home ? We do not want to fall into the error of the political 
 or ecclesiastical wire-puller, who makes machinery his fetish. 
 But whilst a Church requires the inspiration of true ideals and 
 "the support of fixed principles, she also needs the faculty of 
 practically interpreting these ideals, and appl5dng these principles 
 so as to meet the spiritual needs of men. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 CONDITIONS OF CONGREGATIONAL GROWTH.* 
 
 npHE most conspicuous want of success on the part of the- 
 Society of Friends has been its inability to sustain its 
 numerical position in the world, and on any large scale to per- 
 petuate its ecclesiastical polity. This fact can hardly be separated^ 
 from those subordinate heads brought before us in the minute 
 of the Yearly Meeting : — 
 
 (i) The popular misunderstanding of the faith and practices 
 of Friends. 
 
 (2) Their imperfect success in securing the loyal adhesion 
 of their younger members. 
 
 On the first point it may be remarked that " the ignorance 
 and misconception in the public mind " respecting the Society 
 of Friends, however much such misconception now exists, is- 
 distinctly less than it was in the seventeenth century. It is 
 difficult to understand the then wide-spread belief that the 
 Friends were Jesuits in disguise. It is hardly less surprising to 
 see how utterly John Bunyan, Joseph Alleine, Richard Baxter, 
 and Roger WiUiams misunderstood and misjudged their Quaker 
 contemporaries. It is only fair to add that the Friends almost 
 equally failed to do justice to the saintly authors of the 
 Pilgrim's Progress, the Alarm to the Unconverted, and The Saints' 
 Everlasting Rest. It is apparently inevitable that an essentially 
 spiritual conception of the kingdom of Christ must be less 
 
 * Portions of a paper on The Problem before the Manchester Conference, 
 with some Suggestions for its Solution, published in the Friends' Quarterly 
 Examiner, 1896. The Conference was called by Minute of the Yearly 
 Meeting, 25 v. 1895. Its report was presented and minuted, 22 v. 1896. 
 
 273 
 
CONDITIONS OF CONGREGATIONAL GROWTH. 279 
 
 capable of explanation than are systems, largely dogmatic 
 and ceremonial, which can be set forth in articles and catechisms. 
 The unseen must always be m ore difficult to descr ibe than ths 
 seen. There can, however, we think, be no doubt that nothing 
 would so effectually remove that misconception respecting the 
 faith and practice of Friends, which they deplore, as practical 
 illustrations of the success of their polity in ministering to the 
 spiritual needs and moulding the characters of any considerable 
 population. This is just what the Society has failed to do. 
 
 When the Toleration Bill passed into law some forty years after 
 the rise of Friends, they were as numerous in Great Britain and 
 Ireland as were the Methodists at the death of John Wesley. 
 But here the numerical similarity ceases. The Methodist 
 denomination has multiplied from thousands to millions, whilst 
 the sixty or seventy thousand Friends have diminished to little 
 more than one third of their former strength. When William and 
 Mary ascended the throne, the Friends must have constituted 
 some seven or eight per cent, of the population ; now the 
 
 or eigg 
 5uid on 
 
 proportion could only be expressed in an insignificant decimal 
 
 fraction. Nor are the numerical facts more cheerful in other 
 
 parts of the world. Friends exhibit many tokens of vitality in 
 
 the United States, and have girdled the American continent with 
 
 a chain of Yearly Meetings from the Atlantic to the Pacific, but 
 
 their numerical strength in relation to the whole population of 
 
 that vast republic is very inconsiderable.* 
 
 Now what explanation is to be given of these facts — great 
 
 success attained in some directions, failure no less conspicuous 
 
 in others ? Appreciative Anglican writers, like Hancock, 
 
 Westcott and Curteis virtually say that failure was inevitable, 
 
 because the truths to which they admit Friends had to testify 
 
 * Questions having been asked, and statements made, sometimes 
 inaccurate, respecting the number of persons professing with Friends 
 at different periods, it may be convenient here to give a few of the principal 
 facts. The question of the numerical strength of Friends in this country 
 two centuries ago has been investigated by several independent inquirers. 
 AVhilst there is some difference in their conclusions, all, I believe, unite 
 in the opinion that the figure — 100,000, — first given in The Snake in the 
 Grass [1697]. and still frequently repeated, is decidedly too large. In 
 1859, the present writer estimated the number at 66,000, in a population 
 
280 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 should have been witnessed to within and not without the pale of 
 the national Church. The arguments of these writers deserve 
 careful attention, but their fundamental position is traversed 
 by facts, and the policy advocated was, in practice, impossible 
 in the seventeenth century. It is impossible now. Nor does 
 there appear any fundamental reason differentiating the Friends 
 from the Methodists, and accounting for the diminution of one 
 body and the growth of the other. We may be helped to a truer 
 answer by considering the state of feeling prevailing in the Society 
 when its organisation was virtually established, at the date of the 
 passing of the Toleration Act. 
 
 (i) Within two years of that event George Fox was removed 
 by death, nearly all his early coadjutors having previously 
 passed away. Marvellous as was the work which they had 
 accomplished, it was now manifest that their early sanguine 
 hopes of a vast moral and religious reformation being wrought 
 throughout Christendom as the result of their preaching remained 
 unrealised. The primary aim of that preaching had been to bring 
 men immediately and individually to God. It expressed with 
 "the greatest force and exclusiveness the new thought of the 
 Reformation, the thought of individuality." f 
 
 of about 8,500,000. The late William Thistlethwaite, with the same 
 facts before him, thought this figure too large. No fresh data of import- 
 ance have come to light in the last thirty-seven years. Reviewing the 
 whole subject, I now should be disposed somewhat to diminish my former 
 estimate. 
 
 In the present (nineteenth) century the number of Friends in the United 
 Kingdom reached its lowest point in 1864. The figures in that year, and 
 in 1895, were as follows : — 
 
 ~ Ireland. 
 
 Members. Attenders. Total. 
 . 2,851 .. 715 .. 20,930 
 2,603 • • 511 ■ • 26,056 
 • 2,521 . . 402 . . 29,065] 
 The American Yearly Meetings do not publish the number of their 
 attenders. The number of their members, as given in The Friend, 1895, 
 p. 8, is about 88,000. [In 1906, about 98,000.] This figure does not 
 include the Hicksite branch, nor several smaller communities. 
 
 [For purposes of comparison the figures for 1906 have been added. 
 " Attenders " are non-members who habitually attend a Friends' Meeting 
 for Worship. — Editor.] 
 
 t V/cstcott's Social Aspects of Christianity, 123. 
 
 
 Great Britain. 
 
 
 Members. Attenders, 
 
 1864 
 
 •• 13.755 ■• 3.609 
 
 1895 
 
 . . 16,412 .. 6,530 
 
 [1906 
 
 .. 18,677 •• 7.465 
 
CONDITIONS OF CONGREGATIONAL GROWTH. 28l 
 
 (2) George Fox had come to see more and more clearly as 
 years had passed that this individuality, inestimably valuable 
 as it was, must not be so pressed as to isolate the Christian man 
 from the helps and the restraints of association with his fellows. 
 Some rude reminders of the dangers of this policy were taken by 
 him deeply to heart. But the great opposition he experienced 
 in establishing provision for the maintenance of order and 
 government in the Society, disclosed the presence of a widely 
 existing bias towards an inadequate appreciation of the place 
 assigned to human effort, for advancing and maintaining the 
 kingdom of Christ. This bias, perhaps an inevitable accompani- 
 ment of a highly spiritual faith, allied itself, as years passed, with 
 a too fatal facility to the love of ease and the love of money, 
 two of the strongest besetments of human nature. 
 
 (3) The Wilkinson and Story secession, whilst it had failed 
 in its immediate object — the overthrow of the Church meetings — 
 had given a rough shock to the Society. Many of the seceders 
 were welcomed back to their brethren, perhaps too warmly, 
 and reintroduced that element of Ranterism which Stephen Crisp 
 and his colleagues had recognised as so paralysing to active 
 religious life.* 
 
 (4) The dreadful persecution of the thirty years preceding 
 the Toleration Act had very naturally bequeathed a great dread 
 of its recurrence, thus inducing a certain timidity of action, and 
 an almost nervous apprehension, on the part of the leaders 
 amongst the Friends, of any proceeding which should afford a 
 pretext to the Government for withdrawing their much-prized 
 liberty. 
 
 (5) Very imperfect provision existed for the education of the 
 rising generation. 
 
 (6) The strength of character evoked by the individuality of 
 their religious faith, and their business integrity, were making 
 the Friends wealthy. 
 
 We believe that this chain of influences, whilst since modified 
 in some directions, has continued to operate, and that it is 
 * See chapter ii. 
 
282 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 intimately related to the phenomena which led to the convening 
 of the Manchester Conference. 
 '"* To recur again to the struggle for the establishment of the 
 system of Church government, 1670-90, Robert Barclay saw very 
 clearly that there were two principles that had to be maintained 
 in that controversy, and that these two principles were corre- 
 lative. "There be two things especially," he says, "both of 
 which in their primitive use were appointed ; and did very much 
 contribute towards the edification of the Church : — (i) The power 
 and authority which the Apostles had given them of Christ for 
 the gathering, buUding up, and governing of his Church . . . ; 
 (2) The other is that privilege given to every Christian under 
 the Gospel to be led and guided by the Spirit of Christ, and to 
 be taught thereof in all things."* The first of these positions 
 was the one so stoutly challe nged by the opponents o^ th e 
 aiscipimary meetings, and no part of it more strenuously than 
 that"1r^emng"to CEurch government. Hence, when, after a 
 conflict which called forth more than a hundred publications, 
 the maintenance of the discipUnary system had been secured, 
 it came to be thought of rather as a system for Church government 
 than for Church building, i.e., for edification. Hence the Friends' 
 Church meetings developed throughout the eighteenth century in 
 quite a different direction from the class system of John Wesley, 
 which has proved itself so remarkable an instrument for edifi- 
 cation. This idea of government, in association with their Church 
 meetings, predisposed Friends to try to attain religious and 
 spiritual en ds by rule and ^itriplinp , ra,ther than by pe rsuasion 
 and the careful instruction of the understan ding. The applica- 
 Tron of disownment lor marriage contrary to the usages of the 
 Society is the most prominent amongst many illustrations of 
 this tendency, adhered to through generations with disastrous 
 consequences. 
 
 The great want of the Society in the days succeeding the 
 Revolution of 1688 was, in reality, " the gathering and building 
 up " which Robert Barclay had spoken of in the passage before 
 ♦Preface to The Anarchy of the Ranters, written 1674. 
 
CONDITIONS OF CONGREGATIONAL GROWTH. 283 
 
 quoted. If the duty of edification, as their primary work, had 
 been more impressed upon Monthly and Quarterly Meetings 
 and had been followed out by them, the history of the Society 
 might have been greatly different from that which it has been. 
 When the Society arose in the time of the Commonwealth, it was 
 in strenuous antagonism to the existing religious organisations 
 of the country. But after the passing of the Toleration Act, 
 it became one of a number of voluntary self-governing religious 
 societies, recognised by the State as entitled to its protection. The 
 most effectual presentation of spiritual truth it could then have 
 made would have been — (i) i n the hoLv lives of its members ; 
 and (2) by demonstrating in practice that a Society without 
 a clergy, and without ceremonial rites, could perpetuate itself, 
 "anH^buld" supply toTtsmemBers those spiritual helps which are 
 the first obiects of religious fellowship. The first ot tuese presen- 
 tations has never ceased from tEe'cEy^ of the Commonwealth to 
 the present time. The latter was an enterprise since proved 
 by experience to have been one of enormous difi&culty in view of 
 the weakness of human nature. The same influences which led 
 to the growth of sacerdotalism in the early Christian Church are 
 constantly reasserting themselves and paralysing spiritual energy.* 
 If thro ugh idleness, or any other cause, a community neglects 
 tne work ot edification, the religious instincts of me n will seek 
 satisfaction in the jninigtealifljis of a sacerdotal caste, with a 
 
 bum low and thej^^^^jj;ijl^:s^.„^e thmk the Manchester 
 Conference would have been helped if this view had been more 
 pointedly placed before it, and that it is in this direction that 
 an answer would have been found to the two questions sug- 
 gested by the minute convening it: — Why are Friends so 
 misunderstood by the public ; and why are they not more 
 successful in securing the loyal adhesion of their young 
 people ? It is obvious that on the answers given to these 
 questions must largely depend the measures required for 
 * See Stoughton's Ages of Christendom, 104, 105. \ 
 
284 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTEEE. 
 
 removing the weakness which is deplored. There was nothing, 
 however, in the findings of the Conference adverse to the 
 position we have endeavoured to indicate. . . . 
 
 Much admirable counsel was given at Manchester as to the 
 use of the press by Friends in putting before the public their 
 conception of Christian truth and practice, but nothing could be 
 so convincing as to its fitness for meeting the needs of the 
 people as a practical illustration, on a sufficiently large scale. 
 The Adult School work of Friends in Birmingham, in the past 
 half-century, is an object-lesson in this direction of quite 
 incalculable value. So in another department is the uprising 
 and growth of their Foreign Mission work. 
 
 It may thankfully be believed that hundreds of persons left 
 the Conference with hearts warmed with renewed love to the 
 Lord Jesus Christ, to His work and people, and with increased 
 willingness to dedicate themselves to His service. " Lord, what 
 wnn1Hs| thou havc me to do? " may be the question that arises 
 from some of these hearts ; and as a part of the answer to this 
 inquiry of Saul of Tarsus came formerly through a very humble 
 disciple, it is possible that some hint towards an answer may 
 now be conveyed in these pages. It has often seemed to the 
 present writer that the Society of Friends would be much helped 
 if more of it s members carefully considered the objects of al l 
 Qiurch organisation in the light of New Testame nt tea ching. 
 Subsequent inquiry might be, how far are these objects subserved 
 by the congregation to which the individual belongs ? If 
 imperfectly, what duty devolves upon the inquirer, for better 
 carrying out those purposes for which spiritual gifts are bestowed 
 —7" the perfecting of the saints, unto the work of ministering, 
 unto the building up of the body of Christ."* In this connection 
 we need a more general recognition that the power to adapt 
 means to end^ is a talent of signal value for the needs of a 
 Church, as was long ago enforced by the evangelical prophet : 
 " This also cometh forth from the Lord of Hosts, which is wonder- 
 ful in counsel, and excellent in effectual working." f The history 
 * Ephesians iv. 12. f Isaiah xxviii. 29. 
 
CONDITIONS OF CONGREGATIONAL GROWTH. 285 
 
 of Friends through two centuries often impresses the student 
 with their ineptitude in this direction, as regards their Society 
 work and arrangements ; a feature which is sometimes in striking 
 contrast to the skill and resourcefulness shown in the conduct 
 of their own businesses, and also in the direction of philanthropic 
 and political organisations in which they may be interested. 
 To the neglect of edification in the eighteenth century is 
 attributable much of declension and loss of power. The 
 history of Friends strikingly illustrates the excellence of that 
 teaching of Christ's which the author of Ecce Homo calls the 
 law of philanthropy. It is believed that the same history 
 illustrates as strikingly the consequences of the neglect of 
 another law — that of edification ; and not only of its neglect, 
 but also of its merely partial observance. The experience of 
 the Church has shown that the Christian education of children 
 IS one of the most potent means at its disDosarior edifymg. For 
 about a century, London Yearly Meetmg, by letter agam and 
 again repeated, enforced on its members their educational obli- 
 gations towards their children. These exhortations were like 
 a voice crying in tlae wilderness. Not until the establishment 
 of Ackworth School, by Dr. John FothergiU, did any one arise 
 capable of adapting appropriate means to the greatly desired 
 end of the education of Friends' children. Now, for more than a 
 century, the way pointed out by Dr. FothergiU has been followed 
 with constantly increasing blessing and success. This chapter 
 in the history of Friends is extremely suggestive. The signal 
 success which has attended work within one department of the 
 administration of edification promises well for the effort to extend 
 its sphere. Great difficulties will undoubtedly present ; but 
 difficulties exist to be overcome. The history of education in the 
 Society and the history of its Foreign Mission work both show 
 that qualified hitman instruments are the prime agents for carrying j 
 out the Divine purposes. Children were ho't 'taught till there were 
 Schools, dltld scKools were badly officered till there were trained 
 teachers. Friends had no foreign missionaries till they provided 
 the means for sending those whom God might call, and till they 
 
286 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 asked Him to raise up and qualify servants for this department 
 of the harvest field. 
 
 Analogously, edification implies an edifier ; the act of building 
 requires builders. This introduces a consideration of supreme 
 moment : Where are the builders of the Society to be found ? 
 The conditions of their work wOl, substantially, be the same as 
 those which have attached to Gospel labour in all times. The 
 realised mercies of God constrain to reasonable service, and His 
 Spirit consecrates the self-sacrifice and cross-bearing which it 
 involves. If the same spirit which animated John Woolman 
 were to inspire many of those who read or bear his often 
 ■quoted words, blessed results would ensue, although it is 
 neither to be expected nor desired that any one shall follow 
 precisely in his footsteps. The rites of canonisation are not always 
 discriminating, and a word of caution may be timely in respect to 
 -some of the acts of one, who, though he walked so closely with 
 iis Lord, was after all a man of like passions with his brethren. 
 But the point we want to emphasise is this — that the Christian 
 labourer in the department of edification, if his work is to be last- 
 ing, must do it in the spirit of the Master and of His followers. 
 Just as much" 'grace may be needed for work within^tke eST 
 closure of a Christian society in Great Britain or the United 
 States, as amongst the heathen of Madagascar or of China. 
 Loneliness in service may be as acutely felt in London as 
 in any pagan city ; quite as much self-denial may be called for in 
 the work of the Society of Friends at home, as in any 
 part of the Foreign Mission field. One of the true teachings 
 Ustened to at Manchester was that Christ's disciples have to 
 Jeam to endure the contradictions of saints as well as those of 
 sinners. Whence then shall come the labourers for the edification 
 •of the Church at home ? " Pray ye the Lord of the harvest, that 
 he send forth labourers into his harvest " is a Divinely taught 
 supplication, which brings its answer when raised in persistent 
 faith. 
 
 These may seem almost elementary positions ; they are in 
 xeahty very far-reaching. The Foreign Mission field has again 
 
CONDITIONS OF CONGREGATIONAL GROWTH. 287 
 
 and again proved itself the teacher of the home Churches. It 
 may be so now to us. We see men and women giving up many 
 of the luxuries and enjoyments of life in Europe, deliberately 
 remaining poor as to the things of earth, in order that they may 
 fulfil their ministry among the heathen. Surrender of the same 
 character is demanded from home labourers. Some men and 
 
 women must be willirig to give diligent work iir"En3&iidoriii 
 Ireland for the Lord, in association., with the religiousbocR'to 
 which they belong, and to remaiii Doora, as to earthly pos sessi ons^, 
 in consequence. Some will have to renounce positions of in- 
 ffiencem^rcrary, scientific or civil society, in order that they 
 may do the work of an evangelist or an edifier. It will have to 
 be with them as it was with the Apostle, " What things were gain 
 to me, these have I counted loss for Christ." Were this spirit of 
 willingness more prevalent, the proceedings of our Church 
 meetings would not so frequently illustrate the scene in the 
 parable, " thev all . witb..-one c onsent began to m ake excuse." 
 " The restraints of the Spirit of TnitF ^' 'woul3" so circumscribe 
 the business engagements of men, and the social duties of 
 women, that they would not only have time, but also " hearts at 
 leisure from themselves " for doing the Church's work. If we 
 read aright the conditions of discipleship, its terms are not 
 capable of repeal or of essential modification ; and yet, though 
 they be on the old lines of " No cross, no crown," it is no less 
 true that the work of the Lord continues to be " honourable and 
 glorious." . . . 
 
 The opposition sometimes supposed to exist between 
 principles and methods calls for remark. It has been a common- 
 place for speakers occupying very different standpoints to 
 magnify principles and to depreciate methods. The evangelist 
 glowing with love to Christ is apt to undervalue all methods 
 not directly related to the conversion of sinners. The spiritually- 
 minded worshipper, rejoicing in the sense of the preciousness 
 of immediate conununion with God, is liable to depreciate the 
 accessories of public worship as unimportant. It was, in effect, 
 said at the Conference that " methods, modes of worship, and 
 
288 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 all questions of organisation and arrangement would largely take 
 care of themselves " if a certain principle were universally accepted. 
 A little reflection will shew that there is some confusion of thought 
 in thus placing principles and methods in opposition to one 
 another. A principle may be good, and a method may be good, 
 or a principle may be bad, and a method may be bad, but they 
 occupy different spheres and cannot be compared one with the 
 other. Light is good, and the exquisite organism of the eye by 
 which the brain becomes sensible of the presence of light is good 
 too. In a sense, light is greater than vision, but we instinctively 
 feel that one is not to be pitted against the other, and that both 
 attest the infinite wisdom of the Creator. The prophet Isaiah 
 does not hesitate to ascribe to God the skill of the husbandman, 
 which comes as the result of long observation and knowledge of 
 the laws of the vegetable world : " His Grod doth instruct him 
 aright, and doth teach him."* The principle here recognised 
 by the prophet has a far wider application than to the work of the 
 farmer alone. It includes that of the mariner and of the inventor. 
 It holds good in the spiritual as in the natural world. The_ 
 principl e or duty of edific ation ^as^one^^of^^fee^^ functions 
 
 ol tlie (liliurch was insisted uponwi^I^ yreat fo|[ ^ c e by the Apostl es. 
 we nave seeiTmaT Trwas by long experience, and through many 
 mistakes, that the Church discovered that the education of the 
 young was one of its most powerful instruments for edification. 
 It was his insight into the needs of children, and his power of 
 providing for those needs, which enabled Robert Raikes, a century 
 ago, to estabUsh the Sunday School system which has had such 
 beneficent results for the children of Great Britain. It was the 
 energy and determination of Dr. FothergiU in founding Ackworth 
 School which enabled the fourth generation of Friends to secure 
 for their children that which the second and third generations had 
 diesired, but had not seen how to obtain. It was the spiritual 
 perception of George Fox which enabled him to erect that system 
 of Church government which has existed for more than two 
 centuries, and which, notwithstanding all its defects in 
 * Isaiah xxviii. 26. 
 
CONDITIONS OF CONGREGATIONAL GROWTH. 289 
 
 administration, has had so ennobhng an influence upon seven 
 generations of men and women. If we insist, even at the risk of 
 iteration, on this relationship of principles and of methods, it is 
 from the conviction that it lies very near to the kernel of the 
 problem which confronts the Society of Friends. We need to 
 dismiss the idea that we magnify a principle by depreciating a 
 method, and to enlarge our conceptions of the ofiices of the Holy 
 Spirit, so as to think of Him as the Author of organisation and of 
 order as well as of liberty. Whilst the Christian disciple seeks 
 to acquire a firm grasp of the principles of the Divine government, 
 he will at the same time be a careful observer of the methods of the 
 Divine procedure in the practical application of these principles. 
 The apostolic prayer for the Philippians was that they might 
 " abound yet more and more in knowledge and aU discernment, 
 so that they might approve the things that are excellent." The I 
 counterpart to the error of the Hebrew people in " li miting the 
 Holy One of Isr ael " — thinking that His manner of working must 
 be within the range of their finite ideas — ^has shown itself again j 
 and again in the experience of the Christian Church. 
 
 The Manchester Conference was itself a remarkable object- 
 lesson of the truth of the position upon which we have been 
 insisting. To what shall we attribute the spiritual and moral 
 power which characterised the Conference ? Firstly and chiefly, 
 we should say, to the spiritual exercise of those present, as well 
 as of many who were absent, expressing itself in much prayer, 
 both before and during the sessions of the Conference. But it is 
 not difficult to discover a number of minor and concurring 
 causes, largely under human control, which worked towards the 
 same end. The right place of methods in relation to dynamic 
 forces was luminously illustrated in the electrical lighting of the 
 meeting house in Mount Street. It is very easy to conceive a 
 person saying, "The electrical light is so bright and shining a thing, 
 we need not trouble about the details of the induction, let us rely 
 upon the electrical energy itself to do its own work, and leave 
 methods to take care of themselves." The result of this policy 
 would have been — darkness ! Whereas the result of the right 
 
290 JOHN STEPHENSON EOWNTREE. 
 
 adaptation of means, the fixing of wires, insulators, switches and 
 lamps, and all the other details for controlling and utilising the 
 electric currents was — flight. The correspondences to these things, 
 as respects the Conference, were the manifold arrangements made 
 by those who had organised its work. It would be easy to make 
 a long catalogue of these ; for brevity's sake we will enumerate 
 but seven: — 
 
 (i) The trouble which overtook Eutychus at Troas was 
 obviated by the maintenance in the meeting house of an adequate 
 supply of oxygen, secured by the changing of the air between 
 the sessions, and by the economy in its consumption resulting from 
 the use of the electric light. 
 
 (2) The meeting house was comfortably warmed. If this had 
 not been done, people would have been thinking of their cold feet, 
 instead of giving their minds to the papers which were read. 
 
 (3) The efficient provision made by the local organisers for 
 securing sleeping accommodation for their guests made it easy 
 for these to attend under conditions of bodily refreshment, favoiu:- 
 able for allowing the mind and heart to address themselves to 
 the weighty matters submitted for consideration. 
 
 (4) The Conference at each session knew at the outset the 
 business before it. It was not constituted like the notorious 
 meeting at Ephesus, where " the more part knew not wherefore 
 they had come together." 
 
 (5) Anxiety to obtain seats secured great punctuality in the 
 assembling of the meetings. When a session of the Yearly 
 Meeting is opened, not infrequently the attendance is only about 
 thirty per cent, of what it is an hour later. At Manchester, 
 when the hour for business was reached, the company was already 
 waiting, ready at once to enter upon it. 
 
 (6) The same cause as that just mentioned, in combination 
 with admirable door-keeping, promoted the sitting of Friends 
 near to one another. To a large extent also, they sat in a natural 
 way — ^husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, together. 
 
 (7) It will thus be observed that at least two of the human 
 conditions which preceded the Day of Pentecost were present at 
 
CONDITIONS OF CONGREGATIONAL GROWTH. 29I 
 
 Manchester, " They were all together in one place." The morning 
 devotional gathering supplied a third link in the chain of resem- 
 blance to the attitude of the disciples, waiting in Jerusalem for 
 the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, " who," says Luke, " with 
 one accord continued steadfastly in prayer." 
 
 In 1696, William Penn published his " Primitive Christianity 
 Revived, in the Faith and Practice of the People called Quakers." 
 The beautiful thought present in this title is one which has been 
 cherished by Friends throughout their history. Their desire 
 has been practically to exemplify in a human society that spiritual 
 conception of the kingdom of Christ, which is believed to be of the 
 very essence of Primitive Christianity. 
 
 Dr. Lightfoot's conception of the character of the kingdom 
 of Christ* is substantially that which commended itself to 
 William Penn and his colleagues two centuries ago. We appre- 
 hend the London Yearly Meeting of 1696 would have adopted 
 it as its own, and that in 1896 every Yearly Meeting of Friends 
 in the world would willingly express its unity therewith. How 
 then does it come about that the Anglican Church, in which 
 Dr. Lightfoot was a bishop, exhibits so little resemblance to the 
 ideal he depicted ? and how is it that the Friends' attempt to 
 embody the same ideal in their polity has been attended with 
 such imperfect success ? With the first question we have but 
 little concern here. Dr. Lightfoot went on so far to modify 
 that wluch he had written, as to say it must be regarded simply 
 as an ideal, and he apparently deemed it impossible of translation 
 into practice without undergoing such a change as practically 
 
 * " The kingdom of Christ, not being a kingdom of this world, is not 
 limited by the restrictions which fetter other societies, political or religious. 
 It is in the fullest sense free, comprehensive, universal. It displays this 
 character, not only in the acceptance of all comers who seek admission, 
 irrespective of race or caste or sex, but also in the instruction and treat- 
 ment of those who are already its members. It has no sacred days or 
 seasons, no special sanctuaries, because every time and every place alike 
 are holy. Above all it has no sacerdotal system. It interposes no sacri- 
 ficial tribe or class between God and man, by whose intervention alone 
 God is reconciled and man forgiven. Each individual member holds 
 personal communion with the Divine Head. To Him immediately he is 
 Tesponsible, and from Him directly he obtains pardon and draws strength." 
 St. PauVs Epistle to the Philippians, 4th edtn., 181. 
 
292 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 almost to destroy the ideal. He also admitted that for many 
 centuries this conception of the Church of Christ was virtually 
 lost.* 
 
 When so much of failure has attended the efforts of saintly 
 men in the past, it cannot but be felt that humility, and even 
 diffidence, befit us in our attempts to decipher the lessons of Church 
 history, and to obtain from them guidance for our present day 
 wants. It also lessens our surprise that Friends have not been 
 more successful in working out their Church life, in harmony 
 with the beautiful picture which floated before their spiritual 
 vision. It is obvious that the same causes, deeply seated in 
 human nature, which for long prevented the Apostles of Christ 
 from grasping the essential characteristics of their Master's 
 kingdom and which subsequently obscured those characteristics 
 from the vision of the early Christians, are always in operation, 
 to mar the earthly exemplification of the heavenly ideal. The 
 growth of the sacerdotal system and all the corruptions of 
 priestcraft sprang in the first instance from the neglect of their 
 priestly functions by the great body of professedly Christian 
 people. 
 
 From causes which have been already indicated, the strength 
 of Friends has never been adequately put forth towards the 
 development of an active, congregational, spiritual life. A 
 Christian Church was to be a home, a spiritual household, in which 
 the spiritual needs, instincts, and aspirations of its inmates were 
 to be met and satisfied. Experience has shown that bodily and 
 intellectual health and growth are dependent on the observance 
 of law. So is the spiritual health of individuals and communities. 
 The investigation of the conditions of congregational spiritual 
 health would furnish Friends with a fruitful field of research. And 
 though this may be somewhat foreign to the bias of their thoughts, 
 if convinced of its importance they would, we believe, address 
 themselves to it — as, when convinced of the supreme moment 
 of education, or of the obligation to carry the Gospel to the 
 heathen, they surmounted the influences which before had 
 * Ligbtfoot's St. PauVs Epistle to the Philippians, 268. 
 
CONDITIONS OF CONGREGATIONAL GROWTH. 29S 
 
 paralysed action, and entered on these paths of Christian duty 
 with zeal and progressive success. We believe that, almost 
 unconsciously, there has already come to Friends in some districts 
 an enlarged understanding of the conditions of spiritual health, 
 both for communities and individuals. The compatibility of 
 maintaining the unity of the Spirit, along with very considerable 
 latitude of doctrinal belief, and of large diversity of practice in 
 conduct, is increasingly recognised. These things are now seen 
 to be often the tokens of life, whUst uniformity may be the mark 
 of torpor, if not of death. 
 
 It will probably be increasingly recognised that variety in 
 the character and conduct of their religious meetings is called 
 for, in any considerable community of Friends. Different 
 mental constitutions and different states of spiritual experience 
 demand different classes of meetings. In the foundation of the 
 Society, "thrashing meetings" for the populace,, "retired 
 meetings " for the convinced, had each their appropriate place. 
 Meetings compulsorily sUent seem to be on a somewhat un- 
 Friendly basis, but at one period met a requirement of Friends 
 in Bristol. At the present time experience indicates that there 
 is a place for meetings for waiting upon God, on a basis of silence, 
 with a waiting worship and a waiting ministry ; others more 
 distinctively for the exercise of the gift of teaching, affording 
 opportunities for Scripture-reading and various modes of instruct- 
 ing the understanding, as well as for appealing to the heart, and for 
 united prayer and praise. Every meeting that does not violate 
 a clear Scriptural principle should be accounted as on " Friends' 
 lines." 
 
 In connection with the right place of praise, it must, we think, 
 be increasingly felt that no Christian community can afford to 
 neglect the enormous influence of hsnnnody and congregational 
 singing. The determination of the Apostle to sing with the 
 spirit and with the understanding also,* and the connection 
 insisted on to the Colossiansf between the rich indwelling of the 
 word of Christ, and singing with grace in their hearts to the Lord, 
 * I Cor. xiv. 15. t Col- '"• ^6- 
 
294 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 are not altogether easy to exemplify in practice. The first two 
 generations of Friends again and again faced the question, what 
 part singing should occupy in a congregational worship where the 
 dominating thought was that it must be in spirit and in truth. 
 The Yeariy Meeting of 1675 recorded its " living sense . . . that 
 there hath been and is serious sighing, sensible groaning and reverent 
 singing, breathing forth an heavenly sound of joy with grace with 
 the Spirit and with understanding, which is not to be quenched 
 or discouraged . . . unless immoderate," — ^but in prac- 
 tice the placing of singing upon the same basis as preaching and 
 vocal prayer was found to be attended with much difficulty, and 
 as a result an almost total abstinence from congregational singing 
 prevailed for some generations. That which appears to be 
 required at the present time is that some who possess a gift in the 
 service of song, as well as an apprehension of the supreme 
 requirements of spirituality and truthfulness in worship, should 
 address themselves to the question how all these elements can 
 in practice be combined. There must be a way of combining 
 them. The love of song and the power of singing cannot have 
 been given without a purpose. In the Church, as in the State, 
 the man who writes its songs exercises a greater power than he 
 who makes its laws. To attempt to dispense with this enormous 
 power for influencing conduct, and fashioning character, cannot 
 be wise, and must end in disappointment. . .*f 
 
 A saying attributed to William Penn that a Christian should 
 make it a matter of conscience to see that his country is well 
 governed has often been quoted. The spirit of the words applies, 
 with yet greater force, to the obligation which rests upon a 
 Christian to see that the religious Society to which he belongs is 
 efficiently administered, because personal influence is more direct 
 and tells for more in a religious community than it commonly 
 can in the affairs of a great nation. In this connection, the 
 
 * See pp. 152-154. 
 
 ■f Here follows some reference to the two important subjects of the 
 suitable distribution of Christian workers, and the obligation which 
 exists that the requirements of Christian labourers shall be freely and 
 cheerfully supplied by their brethren. See chapter vi. — [Editor.] 
 
CONDITIONS OF CONGREGATIONAL GROWTH. 293 
 
 example of the ritualistic party in the Anglican church furnishes a 
 significant lesson. They have infused zeal, energy, and personal 
 service into the details of religious observances often formal before. 
 We may think much of this zeal misdirected, vitiated by the 
 fundamental error of exalting ceremonial at the expense of spiritu- 
 ality, and fore-doomed in the long run to incline men to be 
 agnostic, and women superstitious ; but in so far as it illustrates 
 the apostolic counsel, " whatsoever ye do, work heartily," it 
 deserves admiration, and it has achieved very notable results. 
 How many cultured women find a congenial sphere for their 
 aesthetic and religious tastes in adorning churches with flowers 
 at Easter, or evergreens at Christmas, in working altar cloths of 
 singular beauty, and ecclesiastical vestments of resplendent hue! 
 In a democratic and non-sacerdotal community, like the Society 
 of Friends, a more excellent way should be found in the efficient 
 discharge of that large and varied ministry which is needed for 
 the service of man. Within its scope would be embraced all those 
 human arrangements, and all that exercise of spirit, on which the 
 profitable holding of meetings for worship and discipline depend. 
 In this light, details often overlooked are seen to be reaUy impor- 
 tant. Door-keeping assumes a spiritual aspect. The punctual 
 gathering for public worship, the warming, lighting, and ventilating 
 of the places of assembly, are matters as really religious as was the 
 upholstering skill of Bezaleel in the construction and furnishing 
 of the Tabernacle. There is hardly any limit to the opportunity 
 for personal service to the sick, physically or spiritually — in the 
 building up of disciples — in the more perfect instruction of 
 young converts in the way of the Lord — afforded in the economy 
 of our First-day Schools and in that of any considerable congre- 
 gation of Friends. By men and women, themselves actively and 
 humbly serving in the royal priesthood, the claims, the assumption 
 and the exaltation of a sacerdotal caste are seen to be futile. They 
 have neither time nor taste for such things. They feel with 
 Nehemiah, " I am doing a great work so that I cannot come down." 
 Whilst the kingdom of Christ recognises no sacerdotal system, 
 every intelligent reader of the New Testament must be struck 
 
296 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 with the importance attached to the character and quahfications 
 of the officers of the Christian society. A large part of Christ's 
 earthly work was given to the training of the twelve Apostles. 
 The choice of Stephen and his colleagues as deacons was one of 
 the first steps in the development of the Church. It supplied an 
 obvious want. The Epistles to Timothy and Titus are chiefly 
 occupied with instructions as to the work and duties of Church 
 officers. It is assumed throughout the Acts of the Apostles and 
 the subsequent Epistles, that the Churches everywhere required 
 officers. Paul and Barnabas ordained elders in " every Church." 
 Paul told Titus to " ordain elders in every city." Men who 
 desired the office of a bishop desired " a good work." Deacons 
 who had used their office well had purchased to themselves 
 " a good degree and great boldness in the faith which is in Christ 
 Jesus." All Church history, including that of the Society of 
 Friends, is a commentary on and confirmation of the position here 
 assumed as to the great influence exerted by the officers of the 
 Christian conmiunity. They are a necessity for the efficient 
 discharge of its functions. In the goodness of God, " manifold 
 grace " is stiU poured out upon His people, of which they are to 
 be " good stewards." In view of this manifest condition of healthy 
 Church life, we cannot but observe with some apprehension the 
 indisposition to accept the responsibility attaching to the possession 
 of spiritual gifts. There must be something out of the true 
 harmony when Ministers deem their service hindered by the 
 recognition of their gift, and when the work of the deacon is 
 supposed to be better done by the "free lance" than by the 
 duly appointed Overseer. If the method of the recognition of 
 Ministers and the appointment of Overseers and Elders is sus- 
 ceptible of improvement, by all means let such changes as are 
 called for be made. But to suppose that a Christian society can 
 flourish without officers is to suppose that an undisciplined 
 crowd can contend with a disciplined army. It is sometimes 
 said, perhaps more often thought, that the growth of a separate 
 class is prevented by the absence of Church officers. We believe 
 exactly the opposite is the usual result. Where the functions 
 
CONDITIONS OF CONGREGATIONAL GROWTH. 297 
 
 of a Christian society are well discharged, there the priest is not 
 needed. But where they are not discharged, where disorder 
 rgi^iT'Si W^'^^^'^ ^^^ Iqmhg fir&BO t fed, where the she ep are not tended, 
 fiMS.Jiie'JSBfaseaeatatiKeaJi.^Sprdotalism finds^^e^^Sffi^ceT 
 The live dog is better than the dead lion. There is just so much 
 of truth in the view we have been combating, as may rightly 
 put us on our guard against the spirit of officiahsm. But official 
 duties will be discharged in a non-official spirit where they are 
 entered upon in the apostolic frame of mind : — " Feed the flock 
 of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not by 
 constraint, but willingly ; not for filthy lucre, but of a ready 
 mind ; neither as being lords over God's heritage, but being en- 
 samples to the flock. And when the chief Shepherd shaU appear, 
 ye shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away."* 
 
 It deserves consideration whether sufficient thought has been 
 given to the location and size of meeting houses. In towns 
 where there is a Friends' congregation of 150 or 200 persons, it 
 might sometimes be better if it divided into two or three congre- 
 gations. Many of the towns in England where Friends' meetings 
 exist are five or ten times more populous than when that meeting 
 was established, and the distance between the place of worship and 
 the residences of the congregation is one reason of the difficulty 
 of sustaining the attendance. In a medium sized meeting we 
 think the Friends' system of worship is frequently more happily 
 illustrated than in one either very large or very small. Where 
 a congregation is inspired with an aggressive, living spirit of 
 Christian earnestness, it usually increases in numbers and this, 
 in the absence of adverse causes, should be the normal expectation 
 of our meetings. 
 
 The monthly magazine is an important medium of uniting 
 influence in many parishes, and in some Nonconformist con- 
 gregations, like that of Dr. Clifford. It would be an interesting 
 experiment were such a publication attempted by some of the 
 larger Friends' meetings. But it is not necessary to multiply 
 suggestions for definite action. They will arise in very many 
 * I Peter v. 2-4. 
 
298 JONH STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 minds, under the promptings of the ever present Spirit, where the 
 duty of congregational growth and edification is loyally accepted. 
 
 A policy like that which has been indicated undoubtedly 
 calls for self-sacrifice, and no little " individual faithfulness " 
 to duty, on the part of those who adopt it. At the outset of 
 his apostolic career, Paul was told " how many things he must 
 suffer for My name's sake." The sacerdotal system of religion is 
 popular because it is easy and fits in with some of the strongest 
 likings of human nature. We believe it cannot be laid down 
 too emphatically that the opposite system, wherein every man 
 is his own priest, can only answer where the community accepting 
 it are strenuously prepared to sacrifice ease, money, position, 
 time, influence, and reputation, in the service of Christ, and to 
 account such a sacrifice a privilege. In the words of Lgndon 
 Yearly Meeting : — " If we would, as a Chiurch, vindicate and 
 exemplify the testimony of Christianity against an exclusive 
 and separate priesthood, it must be in becoming ourselves con- 
 formed to the mind of Christ, and in being subject to His govern- 
 ment through the power of His Spirit. Thus will each be taught 
 and qualified to take his part in the true priesthood of believers."* 
 
 * Christian Discipline of the Society of Friends, i. 54. 
 
PART III. 
 
 EDUCATION IN THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF ACKWORTH 
 SCHOOL, 1779-1879.* 
 
 A GREAT SCHOOL is often both the monument of a good man 
 and the memorial of a great want. Eton perpetuates the 
 memory of its royal founder's peaceful piety, in an age of turbu- 
 lence and bloodshed. Dean Colet founded St. Paul's, to spread 
 the knowledge of the recovered learning, in the days of Erasmus 
 and Sir Thomas More. John Lyon, a yeoman of Harrow, and 
 Lawrence Sheriff, a grocer from Rugby, wishing to do something 
 that might prevent the return of the old superstition that was 
 ever asserting itself in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, endowed 
 the schools which have made Harrow and Rugby famous. 
 
 In like manner, Ackworth School owes its existence to the 
 enlightened energy of Dr. John FothergiU and to the sore 
 educational needs of the Society of Friends in Great Britain a 
 hundred years ago. 
 
 The fourth generation of those who bore the name of Friends, 
 as distinctive of their faith, was passing away in 1779. 
 Amongst the first and second generations of Friends were many 
 able schoolmasters, some of whom had enjoyed a collegiate 
 education. These had mostly died before the eighteenth century 
 was far advanced, and thenceforward the Society of Friends 
 suffered severely from a want of schools and of teachers. Between 
 1700 and 1740, London Yearly Meeting pressed on its members, 
 no less than twenty-seven times, the duty of greater attention 
 to the education of youth. Minutes and epistles were not 
 
 * A paper read at the Centenary Commemoration, 27th June, 1879. 
 
 301 
 
302 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 necessarily more productive of results in the eighteenth century 
 than they are in the nineteenth, but their existence clearly 
 marks the prevalence of an educational famine, . .* 
 
 When the reign of George II. was drawing towards its close, 
 a stone building was slowly rising in the Yorkshire village of 
 Ackworth, designed to be a home for London foundlings. Its 
 promoters expended £13,000 upon it. They expended also much 
 zeal and pains in caring for their helpless charges after they were 
 gatiiered within this spacious dwelling. But the results were 
 disheartening, and in 1773 the institution was closed. Through 
 the chain of events already detailed in James HackTuke's Sketch 
 of the life of Dr. FothergiU, the vacant premises passed into the 
 possession of the trustees of the Society of Friends a few years 
 later. George III. had lived through a third of his long reign, 
 the Earl of Chatham was soon to be laid in Westminster Abbey, 
 the melancholy war between Great Britain and her thirteen 
 revolted Colonies was dragging its slow length along when the 
 foxes that had found a kennel in the deserted Foundling Hospital 
 were disturbed by the advent of other tenants. 
 
 John and Judith Hill were the first heads of the new household. 
 John Hill bore the tities of Treasurer and Superintendent, his 
 wife that of Mistress of the family. For the care and teaching 
 of 314 children they had the help of five schoolmasters, three 
 mistresses, and eighteen other officers and servants. All the 
 accounts which have come down to us of the founding of Ackworth 
 School agree in testif3nng to the wide-spread interest excited 
 amongst Friends by the enterprise and the pecuniary liberality 
 ■with which it was supported. Nor are the views of the foimders 
 obscure as to the class who were to be benefited by the School, 
 or the nature of the discipline that was to be exercised over the 
 scholars. These were to be the diildren of Friends in Great 
 Britain, " not in affluence." The boys were to be carefully taught 
 in reading, writing, spelling and arithmetic, and " labour being 
 intermixed with learning, the ends of both," says Dr. FothergUl, 
 were to be promoted — " a sound mind in a healthy body." The 
 * See Sanroel Tnke's Five Papers. 
 
HISTORY OF ACKWORTH SCHOOL. 303 
 
 girls were to be instructed in knitting, spinning, useful needle- 
 work and domestic occupations, " suitable to their sex and 
 station." The principles of religion professed by Friends were 
 to be diligently inculcated, by example perhaps more than by 
 precept ; and great care was to be taken to preserve the children 
 from bad habits and immoral conduct. Contact with the external 
 world was to be reduced to a minimum and thus " a guarded and 
 rehgious education " was to be promoted. It is impossible to 
 read Dr. FothergiU's letter to a Friend,* written in 1779, or 
 Sarah Grubb's account of the School a few years later, without 
 seeing that the founders of Ackworth School and the founders of 
 monastic institutions a thousand years earlier had some points 
 in common. 
 
 A General Meeting was held at the School three months before 
 the admission of children. The opening ceremony — if ceremony 
 of any sort there was — occurred on October i8th, 1779, by the 
 arrival from Poole, in Dorsetshire, of Barton and Ann Gates, 
 who have almost acquired historic fame from having headed 
 the long procession of nine thousand five hundred children who 
 have entered Ackworth School, f It was but slowly the School 
 filled. About fifty children had gathered by the end of 1779. 
 Amongst these Lancashire was not represented. Yorkshire 
 had sent less than a dozen. The majority were from distant 
 parts. The earliest notices of the School are very favourable. 
 Sir Rowland Winn, of Nostell Priory, is said to have been affected 
 to tears when he saw the healthy, happy faces at dinmer and re- 
 curred to the unhappy experience of the foundlings who before 
 occupied the building. Dr. Fothergill says he twice visited the 
 School in 1780, and writes in the highest terms of the progress of 
 the children in their studies, and of tlreir behaviour. 
 
 Of the state of the School about seven years after its fotmdation, 
 Sarah Grubb has left us a picture that portrays, at any rate, 
 one of its aspects, and is specially interesting to us because it 
 
 * A Letter from J. Fothergill to a Friend in the Country, relative to the 
 Intended School at Ackworth. 
 
 f i.e., up to 1879, when this paper was written. — [Editor.] 
 
304 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 refers to a time earlier than can now be remembered by any living 
 Ackworth scholar. Sarah Gnibb was the daughter of William 
 Tuke, of York, and the nurse of John Woolman in his last illness. 
 She was a helper in Esther Tuke's school for girls, at York, took 
 a leading part in founding Waterford School, and is said to 
 have combined " the manners of a duchess with the piety of a 
 saint." Her letter descriptive of Ackworth, addressed to a friend 
 in America, from Foston — afterwards the home of Sydney Smith 
 — ^was probably written not long before her death in 1790.* For 
 the 180 boys there were, she says, four or five masters, who 
 taught in four schools, the masters keeping much to the distinct 
 branches of learning for which they were best qualified, reading, 
 writing, arithmetic, and the children pass in classes from school to 
 school, excepting the little ones. There were " some apprentices," 
 and ten or twelve of " the eldest and most solid boys " were 
 monitors. These seem to have discharged important functions 
 at meal times, or at least in the collecting before them. When 
 the first bell had rung, ten minutes before a meal, we are told how 
 the masters stand in front of their own divisions, whUst the 
 monitors " survey the boys behind and before, taking care that 
 their buckles are in order, their hair combed, and, if any be dirty, 
 to send them to wash. Here," the narrative proceeds, " the 
 masters have a frequent opportunity of making useful observa- 
 tions, giving general directions, administering counsel, and 
 selecting out offenders for the table of disgrace, which is no 
 otherwise distinguished than by being detached from the rest, 
 and having no cloth upon it." Let us interrupt the narrative 
 to note that there must then have been table-cloths before 
 1790, though in 1814 we shall read of the " clothless board." 
 How long the table of disgrace lasted, history does not say. It 
 was in existence in Robert Whitaker's time, for we have heard 
 how he once entered the dining room and, finding two monitors 
 sitting at this table, lifted up his arms and his voice, exclaiming, 
 " Fallen ! Fallen ! " " When all appetites appear satisfied," 
 continues Sarah Grubb, " and a meal is ended, silence again takes 
 * Printed in Account of Life of Sarah Grubb, 1792 and later editions. 
 
HISTORY OF ACKWORTH SCHOOL. 305 
 
 place, after which, with an intimation of quietude and sedateness, 
 they are beckoned to depart.' ' The same order is observed amongst 
 the girls, under their four mistresses, with " salaries from £12 
 
 to ;f25." 
 
 We must not pause to speak of the duties of the spinning 
 mistress, nor of the means for compassing those most desirable 
 ends — the preservation of the mistresses from "a too oppressive 
 load of anxiety," and " cherishing in them a necessary recollection 
 of mind, enabling them more sensibly to partake of a measure of 
 Divine strength, by which alone they can govern with right 
 authority and tenderness." Sarah Grubb describes the engage- 
 ments of First-days, and tells how the two cooks got the victuals 
 ready the day before — cold meat and fruit pies in summer and 
 " boiled plvmi puddings in winter," only needing one person to 
 stay at home and keep the coppers boiling ; and how in the evening 
 the whole family are collected, when " they quietly settle down 
 in silence, for a little whUe, then one of the masters reads a chapter, 
 and about six boys and as many girls read six or eight verses each, 
 after which they pause again till it is judged a suitable time for 
 the children to withdraw, which they do, not in couples as on other 
 occasions, but singly, going immediately to bed, and at such a 
 distance from each other as to admit of no conversation by the 
 way ; the teachers passing with them in certain divisions preserve 
 the quietude without interruption." But we must not linger 
 longer on Sarah Grubb's picture. She tells so much of the recol- 
 lectedness of the teachers, of the quietude and sedateness of the 
 boys, of the order and solidity of the servants at meals, of the 
 children's clothing so neatly folded every night, scarce one article 
 was to be found out of its place, that it is a little difficult to realise 
 she is writing near to a time when discipline had become so relaxed 
 that one of the boys had assumed the title and exercised some of 
 the prerogatives of king. William Howitt tells how this aspirant 
 for royalty had manifested his prowess by climbing higher than 
 any competitor up the leaden spout in the comer of the pediment, 
 and thereon inscribing his initials, which, he says, writing in 1847, 
 remain unto this day. 
 
306 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 A large part of the money, as well as of the zeal, that launched 
 Ackworth School, was contributed by Friends in the south of 
 England. I find that of the first subscription of £7,000, which 
 paid for the building and eighty-four acres of land, five-sixths 
 (;f5,8oo) was given by donors living south of Leicester, and for 
 many years London and Middlesex contributed more than double 
 the amount of any other Quarterly Meeting to the annual sub- 
 scription. It was but natural that those who found so large a 
 part of the funds should wish to have a corresponding share 
 in the management of the School. Hence the establishment 
 of a London as well as of a Country Committee, each of twenty- 
 eight members. The functions of each Committee were fixed by 
 rule — ^neither might incur an expenditure exceeding £20 without the 
 sanction of the other, and with the General Meeting rested the 
 questionable privilege of deciding between the two Committees 
 when their judgments differed. This was not a promising con- 
 stitution for an executive body, and it was not long before the 
 dual government evolved those symptoms of friction — smoke and 
 heat. The General Meeting's authority over the two Committees 
 was not a dead letter, for there is a record of a sitting from seven 
 to eleven in the evening, hearing an appeal against the Country 
 Committee for refusing to admit a boy on the score of lameness. 
 It is told how the London Committee was once alarmed at the 
 expense proposed by their country friends in making certain 
 structural alterations in stone, and sent down an architect to pre- 
 pare a cheaper plan in wood. Arrived amongst the stone quarries 
 of Yorkshire, he shortly returned to the Metropohs with tidings 
 that wood would cost more than stone ! After the superintendence 
 of Dr. Binns, the difficulties diminished. Gradually, as was 
 natural, the real power increasingly centred in the Country Com- 
 mittee, administering affairs upon the spot. Its relations with 
 Friends in London became most cordial, and the existence of the 
 dual government was prolonged some years, at the wish of north- 
 country Friends, who feared lest its abolition would lessen the 
 national character of the institution. An amusing correspondence 
 between the two Committees occurred about 1836. The Country 
 
HISTORY OF ACKWORTH SCHOOL. 3O7 
 
 Committee decreed the abolition of beer as the children's beverage 
 at dinner. The London Committee proposed as an amendment 
 that the beer be made better. Teetotalism won the day, and the 
 brew-house was transformed into a water-tank ! At last, in 1869, 
 the London Committee was dissolved as a separate body, some 
 of its members forming a section of the united Committee, now 
 (1879) raised to thirty-six persons — irrespective of the Women's 
 Committee of ten persons. 
 
 However, our narrative is yet seventy years behind 1869, 
 and we have introduced the story of the two Committees here 
 because their differences caused not a little perplexity to John 
 Hipsley (who succeeded John HiU as Superintendent in 1791) 
 and conduced, with other causes, to his retirement in 1795. The 
 General Meeting of that year must have been a lively time. The 
 boys' reading was thought not up to the mark. One speaker, 
 himself a teacher, thought the " rising cadence defective." So much 
 exercised was the General Meeting, that it set aside a committee 
 to examine the teachers, who had to read before it. They passed 
 the ordeal successfully, though the air with which one of them 
 threw down his book indicated that such a testing of the teachers' 
 powers was deemed by them rather infra dignitatem. Another 
 interesting proof of the care taken in the teaching of reading 
 at a somewhat later date was the sending of one of the mistresses 
 to York to read before Lindley Murray — from whose judgment 
 there was then no appeal. His report was so flattering that he 
 suggested it ought not be shown to the subject of it lest it should 
 conduce to too much exaltation. 
 
 John Hipsley was succeeded by Dr. Jonathan Binns, of 
 Liverpool, who renounced his medical practice in order, under 
 a sense of duty, to assume the superintendence of Ackworth 
 School. Under his rule, the differences already hinted at between 
 the two Committees, in which Dr. Binns himself became involved, 
 interfered with the prosperity of the institution. Dr. Binns' 
 medical skill, and his devotion in times of iUness, are still on record. 
 He edited the excellent A ckworth Vocabulary, which has passed 
 through so many editions. The Ackworth Table Book, Scripture 
 
308 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 Text Book, and Reading Book, have all been useful and creditable 
 contributions to the school literature of England. In 1804, 
 Robert Whitaker, who had been secretary to Dr. Binns, was ap- 
 pointed the first salaried Superintendent, and retained the office 
 for nearly thirty years. The offices of Superintendent and 
 Treasurer, hitherto united, were now separated. Wilson 
 Birkbeck, Sparkes Moline, and Samuel Gumey — ^father and 
 son — are the four Friends who have discharged the duties of 
 Treasurer. The prevailing opinion that the first Superintendents 
 received no pecuniary remuneration is not quite correct. They 
 had no regular salaries, but the minutes of the Conunittee show 
 that odcasional honoraria were bestowed. We have heard how 
 the late John Hipsley, the son of the Superintendent, served the 
 institution as book-keeper without a regular salary. When he 
 left, in the autumn of 1796, the Committee marked their appre- 
 ciation of his services by presenting him with an aged horse, 
 whereon he rode to York, where he sold it for ;f 12. 
 
 This financial expedient here invites a few words upon 
 Ackworth finance. The terms for board, clothing, and education, 
 fixed in 1779, were £8 8s. per annum. It illustrates the value of 
 money a century ago, and the prevailing ideas as to the resources 
 of Friends "not in affluence," to find Yorkshire Quarterly Meetmg 
 pushing on the formation of its School Fund, so as to reimburse 
 parents one half of this eight guineas. And, indeed, Joseph 
 Brown, of Lothersdale, whose memory is embalmed by his 
 fellow-prisoner, James Montgomery, in the lines " Spirit leave 
 thy house of clay," told Dr. FothergiU it was a contradiction in 
 terras to say the School was for " children not in affluence," and 
 yet to charge £8 8s. per annum, for clothing, feeding, and 
 educating them. The terms remained unaltered till 1799, when 
 they were raised to £10 los., advanced to ^12 12s. in 1801, 
 reduced to ^fio ids. in 1807, and to £10 in 1823. They remained 
 at this figure for a quarter of a century, till in 1848 the system of 
 graduated payments, varying according to the ability of the parent, 
 was introduced. The rates then adopted were £10, ;fi5, and 
 £20. Successive changes, since that year of European revolution, 
 
HISTORY OF ACKWORTH SCHOOL. 309 
 
 have brought the rates to what they are now {1879), ^^5> ;f20, 
 ;£26, ;f32, and £40. The average payment received per child 
 previous to the change made in 1848, was ;fio; the 
 introduction of the graduated rates soon raised the average to 
 £^5 5S-, and it has slowly crept up to ^^26. The annual income 
 of the institution in the first few years of its existence averaged 
 about ^5,000, children's payments contributing rather more 
 than half this sum. It has grown to £9,904, in the year that 
 ended with the last day in 1878, the children paying £7,281. . . 
 Recurring again to the state of Ackworth School early in this 
 century, we have, on the whole, a pleasing description from the 
 pen of William Howitt, who was a pupil between 1802 and 1806. 
 He fully corroborates Sarah Grubb's statements of the complete 
 social equality that existed amongst the children, though some 
 came from very poor homes, and others from homes of many 
 more outward comforts. Sarah Grubb highly commends this 
 blending of different classes, and so does William Howitt. After 
 speaking of the children's isolation from outside evil influences, 
 he says, " Within, the children are free from the distinctions of 
 wealth and rank, which torment the world and excite many keen 
 heart-burnings in most public schools. Here not a sense of them 
 exists. The utmost equality, the most cordial harmony prevail. 
 One child is distinguished from another only by the difference of 
 person, of talents, of disposition, and proficiency in learning. 
 Happy estate ! " he exclaims, " admirable foundation for a noble 
 and erect carriage ; for establishing in the mind a habit of valuing 
 men, not by wealth and artificial rank, but by the everlasting 
 distinction of virtue and talent." But for the inexorable march 
 of time, it would be pleasant to linger over The Boy's Country 
 Book, and to revive the picture it gives us of Ackworth life 
 in the days of the long French war. Especially graphic is the notice 
 of the walks, and the distribution of hats and caps for the 180 
 lads from the great wicker-baskets wherein they were kept stored, 
 except when in use for these rambles. He tells how, in one of 
 these walks, a boy with bow and arrow shot a goose dead, and 
 how the Superintendent paid the aggrieved farmer 5s., the price 
 
310 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 of a live one, and how the odours which permeated the culinary 
 department, when the said bird was cooked, confirmed the 
 veracity of the boy who, the day before, had in vain afl&rmed its 
 real condition. William Howitt tells how he and Wiffen, the 
 translator of Tasso, told tales by turns in the bedrooms, of the 
 sliding in winter, of gardens in summer excelling any other gardens 
 he ever knew, and of the much-loved privilege, then, as before and 
 after, of walking on the flags — " a charmed promenade " — where 
 brothers met sisters, and cousins of uncertain degrees of relation- 
 ship confirmed and renewed their friendships. 
 
 In 1813, wheat and " meslin " cost Ackworth School £1,713, 
 more than three times the cost of flour last year. The harvest 
 of 1812 was bad and the flour bad in consequence. We have 
 heard scholars of this period tell how their pieces of bread would 
 stretch out till they were almost a yard in length ! At an earlier 
 period, 1795, John Hipsley mentions wheat, just before harvest, 
 as 14s. per bushel, and the fears that prevailed lest there should 
 not be com enough in the country at any price. The book- 
 keeper went to Pontefract market in those days, and such was 
 the competition, " that he had to place his hand on the farmer's 
 sack in order to secure wheat, the moment the bell rang for 
 market to begin." 
 
 We must not pass away from the early history of Ackworth 
 without referring to some of the visitations of illness. In 1828 
 the institution was visited with an awful epidemic of fever ; 
 nearly 200 were iU — ^Henry Brady the much beloved reading 
 master, Mary Dumbleton the nurse, and three girls died. In the 
 winter of 1831-2, nearly the same number were attacked by fever 
 — three fatal cases occurred. A pupil who was at school between 
 1821 and 1824, writes, " The state of health must, on the whole, 
 have been below what it ought to have been. Bronchocele, or 
 full neck, was so common that every spring the doctor examined 
 us all round, feeling our necks. When there was incipient 
 glandular swelling, he prescribed an extra weekly plunge in the 
 cold bath — a highly popular remedy." Chilblains were a scourge 
 of many children in winter, in some cases " crippling them for 
 
HISTORY OF ACKWORTH SCHOOL. 3II 
 
 successive weeks." Robert Whitaker, writing during the attack 
 of fever in 1824, refers to the medical treatment of that time in 
 these terms : " most of the late attacks have been slight 
 scarlatina with sore throat, which is not a formidable disease. 
 If the children complain quite in the outset, a smart dose of 
 calomel, with a cup of solution of Epsom Salts, followed by a 
 febrifuge and a little nursing, are generally the means of subduing 
 the complaint in a few days." In the hundred years of 
 the School's history, the whole number of children who have died 
 at school is 93. Arranged in decennial periods, the deaths group 
 themselves thus — 14, 11, 8, 7, 17, 10, 9, 6, 6, 5. It is said that 
 about forty of the foundling children died within three months, 
 during the prevalence of one epidemic. . . . 
 
 The Society of Friends is now so assiduous in pressing on its 
 members the duty and privilege of frequent Scripture reading, 
 and the practice is so general, that it is a little difficult to realise 
 that for more than thirty years the Scriptures were not publicly 
 read in Ackworth School, except on First-day evenings, when 
 Kendall's Abstract was the volume often used. In 1813, 
 Robert Whitaker introduced the plan of reading a chapter from 
 the New Testament every morning after breakfast. Three 
 years later, Joseph John Gumey attended the General Meeting, 
 and in examining the children as to their knowledge of Scripture, 
 found it was very small. In a letter subsequently addressed to 
 the Superintendent, Joseph John Gumey says, " I am of opinion 
 that the minds of the boys are not properly cultivated on the 
 subject of religion. They are remarkably sheltered from evil, 
 but do not appear to me to be positively led to good." At his 
 suggestion, a Bible, formerly given to each child on leaving school, 
 was furnished to each on entering. The scholars cordially accepted 
 his proposals to undertake to study the Scriptures, preparatory 
 to an examination by himself at the close of the year. The 
 Superintendent, Robert Whitaker, and the teachers warmly 
 seconded his views. Each child received a copy of the Bible. 
 " WeU thumbed were these copies at the year's end," says Joseph 
 John Gurney, in his diary. " The children took their 
 
312 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 Bibles to bed with them, read them by the early morning light, 
 pored over them at leisure hours during the day, and especially 
 on First-days. The teachers rendered them their best assistance, 
 knowledge of the subject increased, and with it good ; and when 
 I visited them at the close of twelve months, the whole aspect of 
 affairs was changed." The good work brought about by Joseph 
 John Gumey was continued under his auspices for several years, 
 and then gradually came into the regular school curriculum. It 
 may safely be said that for the last sixty years the care taken in 
 instructing the children in Scripture truth has been a leading 
 feature in Ackworth School. 
 
 I have already referred to three notices of Ackworth School 
 in its early days which have come down to us. Two others now 
 claim attention. A pamphlet in rhjrnie — I cannot say poetry — 
 printed at Nottingham, in 1814, describes a visit to Ackworth by 
 Mentor and Amander. Nearly a third of these three hundred 
 verses of doggerel are occupied with a discussion of punishments, 
 in which the use of the rod is deprecated. The gist of the argu- 
 ment is in the lines — 
 
 " Reject th' 'abrutalizing scourge,' 
 
 And pause, and look within. 
 * * ie 
 
 For if with Solomon I whip. 
 
 Why not with Moses stone ? " * 
 
 Passing over another ten years, I come to a fifth notice of 
 
 Ackworth, in a letter from our friend, Thomas Harvey, who 
 
 was a scholar in 1821-24. He says: — 
 
 "The School was, I believe, considered nearly perfect. He 
 would have been a bold man who had hinted that there was much 
 
 * There is not much in this narrative that is specially illustrative. 
 Two verses descriptive of a dinner at Ackworth, when Napoleon was a 
 prisoner at Elba, may serve as a specimen of the whole. 
 
 " Bak'd pudding crown'd the clothless board, 
 The dinner of fifth-day, 
 Each trencher bore an ample piece. 
 From side to side it lay. 
 
 Soon as the pudding and the sauce 
 
 To ev'ry one were dealt. 
 Stillness immediately ensu'd — 
 
 Stillness, which might be felt ! " 
 
HISTORY OF ACKWORTH SCHOOL. 313 
 
 that was defective. I can believe it was, as a school, in advance of 
 other middlte-class schools, both in education and training ; but in 
 looking back, memory rests on arrangements which, in some respects, 
 were Spartan. The clothing had been considerably reformed, the old 
 leathern breeches were abolished — one pair survived, which boys 
 who inked their clothes were compelled to wear a day or two, as a 
 punishment ; still the clothes were so peculiar in cut and appear- 
 ance that I suppose few on leaviag school were able to wear them 
 out. The dietary was decidedly unsatisfactory. We had roast or 
 baked meat to dinner on two days in the week ; on two other days 
 ' lob-scouse,' a poor thin Irish stew, with a Uttle meat in it ; on 
 another day, suet pudding with treacle sauce ; on another, batter 
 pudding — ' clatty vengeance' — ^very unpopular. On First-days, apple 
 or other fruit pie, or a kind of cold, sweet rice pudding. The 
 dinners were served on wooden trenchers, with very small beer-^the 
 smaller the better — in tin mugs. The redeeming feature of the diet 
 was the excellence of the hot milk porridge at breakfast, and the 
 cold milk with bread at supper. I sometimes think I have never 
 tasted anything so good since those breakfasts. 
 
 " As regards teaching, there were few subjects taught ; Reading, 
 Grammar, Writing, Geography, English History and Arithmetic 
 comprising nearly the whole. . . . The Scriptures were care- 
 fully taught. Several of the masters and apprentices — I remember 
 especially Henry Brady a most superior man among the former, 
 and John Newby among the latter — took a good deal of pains to 
 give the boys a taste for improved pursuits in their leisure time. As 
 to the moral tone of the school, I feel at a loss to speak. That it 
 was lower than it has become, I do not doubt ; that it was higher 
 than in many other schools of the period, I think probable. In so 
 large a school boys group themselves into circles of intimacy, and 
 have only a slight knowledge of other circles. If a boy drew towards 
 an orderly set, and became one of them, he would know little of the 
 doings of a set at the other extreme, and would partake little of its 
 tone of thought. That there was much needing reform I do not 
 doubt — the adult masters were too few to exercise the oversight 
 that was desirable, and there were some traditional notions of dis- 
 cipline that were radically bad, though held with the best of motives. 
 One of these was that any evil that cropped up-^without reference 
 to its greater or less degree of blame-worthiness — was best repressed 
 by severity. The extreme punishment was flogging. This was 
 administered with what seemed to us a somewhat awful surrounding 
 of mystery. After the boys had gone to bed, the culprit was brought 
 before the Masters' Meeting, tried, convicted, and punished. I 
 dare say it was not very severe, but the stigma was most injurious. 
 
314 JOHN STEPHENSON ROVTOTREE. 
 
 Some of the ofiences liable to this degrading punishment were in 
 themselves trivial ; such as carving names anywhere on wood or 
 stone, taking food out of the dining-room, etc. There were also 
 " light and airy cells " for solitary confinement. I remember a high- 
 spirited boy being so broken down by one or two days' solitude, aided 
 no doubt by the goadings of his own conscience, that he was made 
 willing to read a most humble confession of his fault — probably 
 not one of moral delinquency — ^before all the boys, teachers, and 
 superintendent, at the evening reading. . . . Notwithstanding 
 all that needed to be reformed, I look back with respect and love 
 upon the superintendent and teachers. They were able, wise, and 
 good men. . . ." 
 
 In an important document, dated 1846, the gradual 
 relaxation of severe discipline is named, and corporal punishment, 
 though not formally abolished, is stated to be " practically dis- 
 used." It was reserved for an Ackworth scholar — ^the late John 
 Ford — after practical acquaintance, both as pupil and teacher, 
 with the harsher systems of discipline, luminously to explain the 
 principles and illustrate the methods by which influence and 
 authority may be maintained without recourse to corporal in- 
 flictions — ^unless in very rare cases — and yet without relaxing 
 that habit of obedience which still is " the bond of rule." 
 
 In the year 1833, Hannah Whitaker, whose ofiicial connection 
 with the institution dated from 1787, died of cholera, whilst from 
 home on a journey. Her husband, Robert Whitaker, retired 
 from his long term of superintendence the next year. Just before 
 the close of 1834, Thomas and Rachel Pumphrey assumed the 
 duties of heads of the Ackworth household. 
 
 The establishment of the Friends' Educational Society in 
 1837 influenced the history of Ackworth School in various ways. 
 The Society was educational in a double sense. Its theme was 
 education, its objects being practical rather than theoretical 
 The men who took part in its proceedings were themselves 
 educated by the discussions that took place and by the facts 
 elicited by their inquiries. The boarding-school system of 
 teaching, begun by Friends at Ackworth in 1779, had been 
 expanded by the successive establishment of other schools, till, 
 as was said at the Educational Meeting of 1842, from 1,000 to 
 
HISTORY OF ACKWORTH SCHOOL. 315 
 
 1,200 children connected with Friends were in its different board- 
 ing-schools. To my father, the late J oseph Rowntree, the question 
 continually recurred, what were the results of this education ? 
 He has told how constantly this thought presented itself when 
 the Ackworth Committee met with the boys who were leaving 
 school, for the last interview. No one knew better than he that 
 there are mental and spiritual results that would elude any 
 attempt of the statistician to take cognisance of. But it would 
 be possible — could a sufficient number of persons be interested 
 in the inquiry — to follow out the history of a group of Ackworth 
 scholars, to see how many were living after a given interval, how 
 many had gone to this or that trade, how many had faUedin 
 business, how many had emigrated, how many had married, 
 how many were still Friends, for what causes those no longer 
 Friends had left the Society. After much thought, Joseph 
 Rowntree determined to enter on this investigation, and in the 
 autumn of 1843, asked correspondents in all parts of England 
 and Scotland to supply these particulars as respects the 1,869 
 boys who had left Ackworth in the forty years ending with the 
 last day of 1839. It would have been contrary to all precedent 
 if some Friends had not thought this inquiry useless or mis- 
 chievous ; but it was carried through, and, as the result of much 
 patience, a great correspondence, and some expenditure of money, 
 a mass of valuable information was collected. No report of 
 the investigation was published. This would have been difficult 
 in a form not open to objection. Some of the facts disclosed 
 were calculated to occasion pain and discouragement, and it 
 may, I believe, be said that the general result of the inquiry was 
 considered to be disappointing. The startling facts in respect to 
 disownments for marriage contrary to the rules of Friends were 
 made much use of in the subsequent discussion of the Society's 
 marriage regulations. But what more particularly concerns us 
 now, is the result of these retiuns upon Ackworth School. Those 
 most closely connected with its management were convinced 
 that the time had come for improving the material appliances 
 of the School — ^making the schoolrooms more spacious, and 
 
3l6 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 therefore more healthy, and making more decided efforts to add 
 to the power of the teaching force by increasing the proportion 
 of teachers to scholars, and by obtaining better-trained teachers. 
 In 1846-47, an appeal was widely circulated, stating the wish of 
 the Committee to compass these ends, by raising the boys' wing, 
 so increasing the airiness of the schoolrooms, adding to their 
 number by taking the Meeting-house for that purpose and 
 erecting a new one in its place. Along with these material 
 improvements, the number of boys' classes and of teachers was 
 increased. A liberal response came to this appeal — ^£6,238 — and 
 these great changes were carried out. When completed, Friends 
 were so much pleased with them that, after the General Meeting 
 of 1849, ^ ^ou^i demand arose that the girls' side should also be 
 improved. Large alterations were effected in the summer of 
 1851, the whole cost being defrayed by special subscription. 
 But whilst donations paid for these large investments in stone 
 and mortar, added income was wanted for the annual outgoings 
 of the School, now increased by the additional teachers and their 
 larger remuneration. It was to meet this that the plan of 
 graduated charges was successfully introduced in 1848. In 1852, 
 the study of French was commenced — ^more than sixty of the 
 children beginning to learn it. Latin had been taught to the 
 elder boys since 1824 ; now another class of boys began to learn it. 
 It wiU be seen that the period from 1846 to 1852 was one of the 
 most momentous in the history of Ackworth School. It was one 
 of rapid change and of great improvement. Thomas Pumphrey 
 was just the man to be at the head of affairs at such a time. His 
 fertility in resource and his active and enterprising spirit were of 
 the greatest value in carrying out alterations, both material and 
 educational. 
 
 During the same period another event had occurred, that 
 told how " the old order changeth." For sixty-seven years 
 Ackworth School had pursued its operations with unbroken 
 continuity when, in the sunamer of 1847, the great household 
 broke up for the first vacation. " Who," says a spectator, " but 
 those who witnessed the animated scene of the departure, can 
 
HISTORY OF ACKWORTH SCHOOL. 317 
 
 picture its thrilling and overpowering character? Situated 
 several mUes from the nearest railway, it was needful to call into 
 requisition all the vehicles at disposal ; and five large tilted 
 waggons, fitted up for the occasion, each containing thirty or 
 forty light-hearted children, made more than a trip a-piece to one 
 or other of the neighbouring stations. The morning was favour- 
 able ; many visitors assembled to witness the novelty ; the 
 children in their best, each bearing his own modicum of luggage, 
 took their places in the waggons, nothing loth to be tightly stowed ; 
 and before eight o'clock the first party of loo started amidst loud 
 and reiterated cheers, which were heartily re-echoed by the 
 joyous freight of the ponderous, heavily-laden vehicles. Ere 
 another hour had elapsed, a second loo were thus disposed 
 of, and by one o'clock the busy scene of the morning concluded 
 by clearing out the last juvenile occupant of yesterday's crowded 
 mansion." 
 
 The vacation of 1847 was experimental, but its results were 
 so satisfactory that it became a permanent institution. For 
 nearly half-a-century no vacations at all were allowed to the 
 Ackworth scholars. Children were four, five, and even seven 
 years without seeing their homes. A story is told of a poor man 
 in Cornwall, who sent one child after another to Ackworth. The 
 journey there was too great for him to undertake, and as the 
 children on leaving school took situations in the North of 
 England, their home-leaving for school was a home-leaving for 
 life. Nor must it be forgotten that, in the days of no vacations, 
 telegrams were unknown, post-cards unthought of, and the 
 postage of letters so dear that they were very few in number. 
 The few letters that were written at the School for the home 
 circle were always seen by a teacher or Superintendent before 
 leaving the institution, so that there was hardly any intimate 
 communication kept up between parent and child, through the 
 post. Parents came to the Inn, and so saw their children — but 
 it was only some who had this opportunity. The founders of 
 Ackworth had seen the evils of children growing up ill-taught in 
 their homes. In seeking to remedy this, they to some extent 
 
3l8 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 overlooked the unique power of the family bond, as a Divine 
 institution, and the impossibility of parental duties being per- 
 formed by proxy. . . . It is true we can hardly realise the 
 difficulties there were in the way of locomotion eighty years ago, 
 which, of course, partly explain the absence of vacations. Some 
 of the present company wiU remember how, when set down by 
 the coach at Went Bridge, they were brought on to Ackworth in 
 a cart littered with straw, and drawn by the ox which also carted 
 coals and turned the washing mill. Soon after the introduction 
 of railways, permissive vacations were allowed to children who 
 had been two years at school, and when the general vacation 
 just spoken of followed, it may safely be said that the School 
 came into closer harmony with the Divine plan of human teaching 
 and discipline. 
 
 Meantime, a stone building had been rising on the brow of a 
 hm that had formed part of the School estate. It looked lovingly 
 down on the elder building, and was designed as a training college 
 for young men teachers, under the bequest of Benjamin Flounders, 
 of Yarm. The Flounders Institute was opened in the smnmer 
 of 1848, under the superintendence of Isaac Brown. It has most 
 infiuentiaUy helped the work of the School, during the thirty 
 years that have elapsed since its opening. 
 
 In 1858, the girl's wing was remodelled and improved. The 
 next year the swimming bath was provided by the liberality of 
 former scholars. The old bath claims a few words of notice, for 
 which I am again indebted to Thomas Harvey : — 
 
 " The old bath, fed by a very cold chalybeate spring, was about 
 half-a-roile from the school. Those whose turn it was, rose early 
 and walked before early class and breakfast to bathe — the new and 
 little boys had to jump in and be caught, after their plunge, by bigger 
 boys, who handed them on to the shallower part of the bath to 
 creep out. If a boy shrank from leaping into what seemed, to his 
 little mind, a yawning gulf, he was bodily thrown in by one of the 
 younger teachers. It was a frightful process, yet we soon got used 
 to the bath and, after a while, thoroughly enjoyed it. We had 
 no towels, but put our shirts on our wet skins and got dry by exercise. 
 Towels were introduced soon afterwards . That this bathing refreshed 
 
HISTORY OF ACKWORTH SCHOOL. 319 
 
 and invigorated the stronger boys, I have no doubt, but none also 
 that it injured others. I remember a Uttle boy being seized with a 
 shivering fit after his bath — taken back to the nursery and his bed, 
 and in a short time dying. At his funeral, his elder brother — then 
 a very young acknowledged Minister — ^was present, also J. J. Gumey. 
 Under the pathetic ministry of these friends, the school was a Bochim 
 (the boy was a general favourite) ; but I do not recollect that any 
 connection was suspected to exist between the shock to the nervous 
 system of a delicate child at the bath, and his illness and death." 
 
 Previous to i860, examinations into the attainments of the 
 children had been made by the Committee, and at the General 
 Meetings by the visitors present. In this year, an examination 
 was conducted by William Davis, B.A., a professional examiner. 
 Inspections by professioneil examiners took place in 1872, and 
 again in 1874 and 1879. 
 
 In 1862, Thomas Pumphrey retired from the superintendence 
 of the School. His death occurred in the same year. George 
 Satterthwaite entered on the vacant office and held it for eleven 
 years. In 1870, the rules of the institution were altered to allow 
 of the admission of children outside the line of membership with 
 Friends. The School had not been full, and it was believed 
 these extra scholars would improve the finances without inter- 
 fering with the conduct of the institution as a Friends' school. 
 
 I have already referred to five accounts of Ackworth School 
 relating to different epochs in its history. Two others should be 
 noticed shortly. In 1853, George F. Linney published a history 
 of the School — a small volume of fifty-five pages. It was written 
 by the late Thomas Pumphrey, and is the fullest account 
 of the institution that has hitherto been published. I have 
 often employed it in the preparation of this sketch. In 1866, 
 Ackworth School was visited by J. G. Fitch, M.A., on behalf of 
 the Schools' Inquiry Commission. His notice of the School is 
 printed in the ninth volume of the report of that Commission, 
 presented to Parliament in 1868. He says : — 
 
 "The intention of the founders has been admirably carried 
 out. . . . The course of instruction is faithfully described in 
 the regulations as a ' sound, useful education, rather than one of 
 
320 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 a showy or superficial character.' In the girls' school I was 
 especially struck with the beauty and finish of the reading, 
 and of all the written exercises. In both schools, geography, 
 history, English grammar, and experimental science are well and 
 intelligently taught. Instruction is also given in Latin and French. 
 Greek is not attempted. The whole curriculum contemplates the 
 removal of the pupUs at about fifteen. I cannot sufficiently express 
 my admiration of the order, seriousness and repose of this great 
 institution, or my sense of the advantage which the pupils enjoy, 
 in the watchful supervision of the Society to ^which they belong." 
 
 On the retirement of George and Rachel Satterthwaite from 
 the superintendence in 1873, Josiah and Mary H. Evans succeeded 
 as heads of the Ackworth household. Robert Whitaker was a 
 successful teacher before coming to Ackworth, but, with this 
 exception, Josiah Evans, the seventh Superintendent, was the 
 first who had enjoyed a professional training as a school-master. 
 His administration, extending over four years, will be remembered 
 as the period of the first winter vacation (1876), also as that in 
 which the teachers and Superintendent first dined with the 
 children, conversation being henceforward allowed at that 
 important event in each day's proceedings. The boys' washing- 
 cellar was done away with, and the new warm baths and lavatories 
 erected. In the educational department of the School, Latin 
 and French, Geometry and Algebra were now for the first time 
 taught in all classes except the lowest, and the whole School was 
 re-arranged, on the principle of placing every chUd under an 
 adult teacher, each of whom was assisted by one or more junior 
 helpers. 
 
 The present Superintendent, Frederick Andrews, with his 
 wife, entered on their duties after the vacation of 1877. All 
 interested in the School will desire for our friends a long and 
 useful reign."" 
 
 And now, though I have brought down my narrative from 
 
 1779 to 1879, ^°^ much that is pertinent to the subject in hand 
 
 remains unsaid ! And that which remains unsaid, personal 
 
 reminiscences, anecdotes of teachers, officers, and scholars, 
 
 * Anna Maria Andrews died in October, 1888. — [Editor.] 
 
HISTORY OF ACKWORTH SCHOOL. 321 
 
 changes in manners, customs, dress, and regulations, is that which 
 gives hfe and sharpness to the dry outlines of history. . . . 
 
 In writing the foregoing pages I have been often reminded 
 of a well known sentence in one of the speeches of the late Mr. 
 Gladstone, where he spoke of the social forces which move on in 
 their might and majesty, and which the tumult of our debates 
 cannot for one moment impede. We have seen how a century 
 ago, the " Quaker colony " was founded at Ackworth, life there 
 being regulated on a model far removed from that approved by 
 the world at large. It is said, I apprehend with truth, that such 
 was the isolation of the children that events like the battle of 
 Trafalgar, the burning of Moscow, Napoleon's overthrow at 
 Waterloo, and even the recurrence of Christmas Day, remained 
 unknown to them long after their occurrence. Yet Ackworth 
 cotild not be unmoved by the pulsations of life, the movements 
 of the great social forces in the wide world around it. The 
 discovery of vaccination and other changes in medicine, the rise 
 of teetotalism, the invention of lighting by gas, of lucifer matches, 
 the introduction of railways, cheap postage, telegraphs, the 
 repeal of the Corn Laws, the general softening of manners, have 
 all made their distinct impress on the character of Ackworth life. 
 
 I should like to have referred to officers both living and dead, 
 to whom the School owes much. Notable gardeners, beneficent 
 bakers, governesses like Hannah Richardson, housekeepers like 
 Sarah Maddocks, nurses like Mary Williamson, book-keepers like 
 George Bottomley, might claim a tribute of affectionate remem- 
 brance. Nor can I stop even to recount the names of eminent 
 teachers — both men and women — which will be fresh in the 
 memory of most present. Some remain among us, and some have 
 gone to their reward. 
 
 I should like, too, to have named some of the notable men 
 and women who have served on the Committee of Ackworth 
 School. The names of some have incidentally occurred already, 
 but I have hardly mentioned William Tuke, the friend of 
 Dr. Fothergill, and the founder of the Retreat ; Dr. Dalton, 
 whose methodical economy led him to omit his annual subscription 
 
 23 
 
322 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 in the years he served on the Committee ; Edward Pease, the 
 friend of Stephenson, and the father of railways ; his son Joseph 
 Pease, the first Friend returned to Pariiament, a munificent 
 contributor to the needs of Ackworth ; and a host of others of 
 whom time fails to tell. And so it does too of ancient customs,! 
 when the Committee Friends closed the day's labour over glasses 
 of spirits and water, and fragrant fumes sped upwards from their 
 long clay tobacco pipes. Amidst the grave debates of the Committee 
 it would not be difficult to name many quaint or ludicrous passages. 
 For example, when the wooden trenchers were abolished, a vener- 
 able Friend with much emphasis expressed the hope that they 
 would be carefully preserved, as he was assured they would at 
 no distant date be again wanted for use. The custodian of the 
 School's archives can perhaps say whether they are still awaiting 
 such a resurrection ? 
 
 We must not entirely omit the mention of eminent scholars. 
 Certainly, on this auspicious day Ackworth will not forget that it 
 has on its rolls such names as those of William Allen Miller, 
 V.P.R.S., William Howitt, Sarah Ellis (nee Stickney), Jeremiah 
 Holmes Wiffen, Benjamin B. Wifien, the Right Hon. James 
 Wilson (founder of the Economist newspaper, and Finance 
 Minister of India), and the Right Hon. John Bright, M.P. 
 
 " Great men have been among us. 
 Hands that penned and tongues that uttered wisdom." 
 
 But we must not linger on these well-known names nor even 
 stop to lengthen the list of the Ackworth alumni, for it would 
 surely be altogether foreign to the best traditions of Ackworth 
 if this day were allowed to pass without making some effort to 
 draw from the annals of the past teachings for the present and 
 the future. Like the dying king, we hear both — 
 
 " The voice of days of old and days to be." 
 
 Nearly forty years ago Samuel Tuke endeavoured to make 
 an estimate of what Ackworth School had done and what it had 
 failed in. The subdued tone of this essay contrasts pointedly 
 
HISTORY OF ACKWORTH SCHOOL. 323 
 
 ■with the rose-coloured tints in which his relative, Sarah Grubb, 
 had painted her canvas half-a-century before. 
 
 " We think," says Samuel Tuke, " there has been sufficient 
 evidence of successful effort to encourage those who are engaged 
 in carrying on the institution to persevere, and at the same time 
 sufficient evidence of failure, in degree, at least, connected with our 
 defective operations, to stimulate us to -further effort in the great 
 service of right moral teaching." For a hundred years Ackworth 
 School has " given instruction, in the arts which it professed to 
 teach, in a sound and efficient, and never in a superficial manner." 
 Its scholars were early noted for the excellence of their writing. 
 Ackworth has sent out hundreds of admirable readers, girls famed 
 for the beauty of their sewing and boys quick and accurate at 
 accounts. For sixty years it has been thorough in its Scriptural 
 teaching, and its scholars have a wide-spread reputation for the 
 possession of " industrious persevering habits," as the result of 
 regular application enforced in the School. " We know further, " 
 says Samuel Tuke, " that Ackworth School has given its pupils a 
 very useful and competent introduction to the various posts in 
 commercial and civil life" which they have filled, and "many 
 good men, fearing God and hating covetousness," have been 
 instructed in the School, not a few of whom "look back to their 
 instruction at Ackworth, in things moral and religious, and to the 
 circumstances which surrounded them whilst there, with grateful 
 recollections."* We think it may be said further that the type 
 ■of character fostered at Ackworth has been one greatly needed 
 in English society — distinguished by its thoroughness, its love of 
 justice, its dislike of priestcraft in every form, its appreciation of 
 men by their intrinsic worth rather than by their adventitious 
 distinctions. These things, far more than the circumstance 
 that a very few of its sons have attained to eminence, are the real 
 glory of Ackworth, and constitute its claim to continued support 
 and confidence. One result of the foundation of Ackworth 
 School, not foreseen a century ago, has been the pecuniary harvest 
 that its pupils have reaped, from the knowledge it has imparted, 
 * Samuel Tuke's Five Papers, 83-5. 
 
324 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 and the habits it has implanted. The diminution of pauperism 
 amongst Friends, in the present century, is largely due to the 
 influence of Ackworth School. 
 
 But there is another side to the picture. Too many Ackworth 
 pupils have belonged to an opposite class to that already described. 
 Dr. FothergiU and his colleagues would, we believe, have been 
 disappointed could the returns of 1843 have been laid before 
 them, and they had seen how many had left the religious Society 
 to which they belonged, and in too many cases had left also the 
 walks of virtue. With human nature as it is, a certain amount 
 of failure must always be counted on in any school. Amongst 
 the special causes of failure in the early history of Ackworth 
 were an exaggerated view of what could be attained by the 
 isolation of children from manifestly evil influences, of the 
 power of the Church as distinct from the parent to mould 
 the characters of its children, and a forgetfulness of the place of 
 the affections in the complex nature of a child, which need culti- 
 vation hardly less than the conscience and the intellect. It is a 
 danger, perhaps an inevitable danger, of all great schools that 
 the individuality of children's characters may be overlooked, 
 and an unelastic discipline be applied to all, without reference to 
 the peculiarities of mental and physical temperament. The same 
 class of mistakes are apparent in the Church economy of the day, 
 which separated so many from Church fellowship for the act of 
 marriage contracted in a way not recognised by the Society.^ 
 The direction of changes in the last fifty years has been, in the 
 main, an admission of these errors. The tone of moral and 
 religious teaching has become more positive, the School, it is felt, 
 must be the ally and handmaid of the parent, not his substitute. 
 A more generous treatment of the body and a broader culture of 
 the mind are now enjoyed by the Ackworth pupils than in any 
 past time. Necessarily, these changes bring their accompanying 
 dangers. Ackworth School has its own traditions to cherish, 
 and its own character to maintain and improve, not to throw 
 overboard in the hope of obtaining a fresh one. It should 
 jealously guard its ancient character for thoroughness in what it 
 
HISTORY OF ACKWORTH SCHOOL. 325 
 
 undertakes. It would be a grave mistake to exchange thorough- 
 ness for superficial breadth. Clear, legible handwriting is more 
 to be prized than a little aptitude in drawing ; accurate account- 
 keeping, good reading, correct spelling would be badly exchanged 
 for a smattering of French or Latin. It were, too, greatly to 
 be regretted if Ackworth School became so expensive as to unfit 
 it for those for whom it was first founded — " the children of parents 
 not in afiluence " — or if " plain living " were abandoned to the 
 detriment of "high thinking." And, again, Ackworth School 
 must emphatically be a Friends' school. It is true it cannot be 
 unaffected by the movements of religious thought and life, any 
 more than by those of social and domestic life. It were useless 
 to attempt to reproduce in the nineteenth century precisely the 
 type of religious character laboured after in the eighteenth. It 
 -wtH. probably be too much to expect that all its pupils will, in 
 after-life, remain in communion with the Society to which they 
 are indebted for their education. But they will carry with them 
 that which is above all price, and which is the essence of Friendly 
 teaching, if, when they leave Ackworth School there is impressed 
 upon their hearts and consciences that deep sense of personal 
 Tesponsibility and that loyalty to duty which spring from faith 
 in the abiding presence of Christ with men, irrespective of outward 
 rite, of consecrated place, or of priestly ceremony. If with this 
 faith is blended that love of justice, and of civil and religious 
 freedom, and respect for the rights of men, without regard to race 
 or language, which have characterised the noblest and the best 
 ■of Ackworth scholars, England herself will have cause to rejoice 
 in the continued prosperity of this great School. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF YORK FRIENDS' 
 BOYS' SCHOOL, 1829— 1878.* 
 
 TN attempting to sketch the history of the School, whose fiftieth 
 anniversary we celebrate to-day, it might have given a 
 broader interest to the story had I first spoken of older associa- 
 tions — educational or historical — that cluster around its- 
 dwelling-place. Half a century is a long period, measured 
 by a human lifetime. It may be a short period measured by 
 the lifetime of a city or nation. Eleven hundred years ago,. 
 Charlemagne found here the most famous schoolmaster in 
 Europe, and persuaded Alcuin to exchange his home at Eoferwic 
 for one in the school attached to his court at Tours. It might 
 not be uninteresting to be reminded of the relics of Norman 
 power contiguous to the Lawrence Street School ; of Walmgate's. 
 name, from the Watling-gate of the Romans ; of its Bar, battered 
 down by Oliver Cromwell ; of Lawrence Street itself, named 
 after the saint roasted on the gridiron — a street in which 
 Wentworth, Earl of Stra£ford, carried out his policy of " Thor- 
 ough " in sanitary matters, two centuries and a half ago. Or 
 we might discuss the doubtful etymology of Bootham, or trace 
 the history of Friends in York, since that snowy Christmas day,, 
 in 165 1, when George Fox was hustled out of the Minster and 
 thrown down its stone steps. But if I am to compress into 
 thirty minutes the annals of fifty years, these and other attractive 
 trains of inquiry must be remorselessly dismissed, and I must 
 confine myself strictly to the subject matter of this essay. 
 * A paper read at the Commemoration Meeting, January 30th, 1879. 
 
 326 
 
HISTORY OF YORK FRIENDS' BOYS' SCHOOL. 327 
 
 The establishment of the York Friends' Boys' School was not 
 an accidental or an isolated event. It was the welding of another 
 link in a long chain of educational effort. It is a thrice-told 
 tale how at the rise of the Society of Friends the educational 
 wants of its children were to some extent supplied by the schools 
 conducted by those of its members who had enjoyed a liberal 
 education in the denominations to which they had previously 
 belonged. Most of these had died before the House of Hanover 
 was firmly seated on the throne, and it is manifest that in the 
 days of the Royal Georges, a grievous want of schools and of 
 teachers existed in many districts. Yorkshire was one of these. 
 There were a few Friends, more particularly in the West Riding, 
 earnestly solicitous for the right teaching of children. But the 
 mass was inert. " The desire for knowledge," remarks Samuel 
 Tuke, writing of this period, " is usually in the inverse proportion 
 to its need." In a remarkably tentative fashion, Yorkshire 
 Quarterly Meeting pressed the subject of education on its 
 constituents, in minutes that raise a smile from their vagueness ; 
 and with a patience that despised not the day of small things, 
 gradually formed its School Fund, now amounting to ;f5,ioo, for 
 the general furtherance of education. The annual income began 
 to be employed about the time that Ackworth School first opened 
 its doors to the children of Friends. 
 
 Ere that event, William Tuke, now best remembered as the 
 founder of the Retreat, had become a notable figure in the circle 
 of Friends resident in York. He had helped to nurse the School 
 Fund into existence. In 1785, he and his wife, Esther Tuke, 
 began that remarkable school, for girls of a more affluent class 
 than were usually sent to Ackworth, which pursued its career 
 until 1813. The interest in education felt by WiUiam Tuke was 
 inherited by his son and grandson, Henry and Samuel Tuke, and 
 was shared in by their relatives, the Hipsleys, Alexanders, and 
 others. In 1818, William Tuke brought before his Quarterly 
 Meeting a proposal to found what would now be called a middle- 
 class school for the sons of Yorkshire Friends. The proposal was 
 warmly taken up, and donations exceeding £2,000 were offered 
 
328 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 towards an endowment. But discouragements supervened 
 and the plan was not carried out. 
 
 In 1810, the Retreat had purchased premises in Lawrence 
 Street for the use of its convalescent patients. After using the 
 Appendage — as this home was styled — for twelve years, it was 
 deemed wise to give it up, and the premises then purchased by 
 the Trustees of the School Fund were rented by William Simpson 
 for the purposes of a day and boarding-school. This he carried 
 on for six years. It does not fall within the plan of this sketch to 
 describe William Simpson's school. Some of his scholars have 
 become notable men, though his educational methods, if tradition 
 has not magnified their oddities, must have been grotesque. 
 
 Grove House School, Tottenham, had been established under the 
 superintendence of Thomas Binns, in 1828, for the sons of Friends 
 in affluence. Before going to Tottenham, Henry Tuke had been 
 a pupil at Richard L. Weston's private school, Boley Hill, 
 Rochester. There his father, Samuel Tuke, had become ac- 
 quainted with a junior master who in 1815 had left Ackworth 
 and entered the profession of teaching. Dressed in small-clothes, 
 with rough woollen stockings, revelling in the natural charms of 
 the valley of the Medway, storing his memory with poetry 
 and hymns, as weU as writing verses himself, a somewhat 
 random talker, excitable, having warm personal likings and 
 dislikings, but, withal, able to rule and to teach, was then 
 John Ford — the future Superintendent, for thirty-seven years, 
 of York School. He had entered into negotiations with 
 William Simpson, with a view to carrying on the School as 
 a private undertaking. In the course of 1828, however, the 
 Quarterly Meeting, on the suggestion of Samuel Tuke, de- 
 termined to take the School into its own hands, and John 
 Ford, with the prospect of being appointed its Superin- 
 tendent, gladly and wisely relinquished the idea of carrying it on 
 himself. 
 
 Reverting again to the proposed school of 1818, it is 
 observable that the principles laid down by its promoters were 
 liberal and comprehensive. The printed prospectus adopted by 
 
HISTORY OF YORK FRIENDS' BOYS' SCHOOL. 329 
 
 the Quarterly Meeting starts from the position that the making 
 of provision in its schools for all classes of its members, is the 
 duty of the Church. The good men of 1818 proposed to them- 
 selves an institution for 50 or 60 boys, paying £45 per annum, 
 learning Latin and French, with the opportunity of acquiring 
 Greek and Hebrew on an additional payment. They designed, 
 in fact, to supply for the middle and higher classes of Friends in 
 Yorkshire, a moral and religious discipline after the manner of 
 Ackworth, combined with a much wider literary curriculum. 
 The scheme of WiQicim Tuke, after ten years' interval, became a 
 reality under the auspices of his grandson. The names of the 
 first committee were : John Hipsley, Samuel Tuke, Newman 
 Cash, John Rowntree, James Backhouse, Robert Jowitt, 
 William Rowntree, John Hustler, Wilham Harding, William 
 Alexander, John Yeardley, Joseph Rowntree, Leonard West, 
 and Luke Howard. Samuel Tuke acted as Treasurer ; he was 
 succeeded by Henry Hipsley in 1855 ; and on his resignation in 
 1864, John Casson was appointed. Joseph Rowntree took the 
 post of Secretary in 1829, and with one year's interval, when 
 Thomas Backhouse held the pen, retained it to his death in 
 1859. Since that event the writer of this sketch has filled the 
 post. . . . 
 
 The fifty years of the School's history naturally divide into 
 two periods. That at Lawrence Street from 1829 to 1845 inclu- 
 sive, extends over seventeen years ; whilst thirty-three — 1846 
 to 1879 — have elapsed since the institution took up its home in 
 Bootham. 
 
 During the first period the size of the School varied consider- 
 ably. In 1830 there were forty-five boarders, and seven day 
 scholars ; in 1842 there were but thirty-six boarders. The terms 
 were fixed in 1830 at £20 per annum and £2 2S. extra for each foreign 
 language learnt, and for drawing. The actual average payment was 
 about £35. By ten successive changes the terms have risen, till, in 
 1878, the average payment per boy reached £58, of which £iy 8s. 
 was expended in remuneration of teachers. The corresponding 
 amount in 1830 was';f6 4s. It has been noted already that 
 
330 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 the premises in Lawrence Street were not erected for a school, 
 and as will hereafter appear the site was condemned in 
 1843 as unfitted for a school.* In its earlier days it was 
 supposed to possess many advantages. Within three minutes' 
 walk were the Foss Islands — a delightful skating-ground in 
 winter, ere sanitary reformers drained them ; in summer, rich 
 in treasures dear to the botanist and conchologist. Within 
 easy walk along the Hull Road, was Heslington field, then unen- 
 closed and affording ample scope for botanical and entomological 
 research. For longer rambles were Low Moor and Tilmire, and 
 above aU, Langwith. " How many there are," says a scholar 
 whom I shall again quote, " to whom the remembrance of 
 Langwith will bring back a rush of pleasant thoughts, and make 
 them perhaps for the moment sigh that they are not still boys, 
 and able as then to drink in, with the freshness of a boy's delight, 
 a draught of the elixir of childhood." 
 
 Not a furlong from the school-house stood the residence of 
 Samuel Tuke, with whom John Ford maintained an almost daily 
 intercourse in the first years of his superintendency. In these 
 days Barbara Waller, a most ef&cient and managing woman, 
 acted as housekeeper. She was sister to Robert Waller, 
 Samuel Tuke's partner ; and when efforts to obtain a house- 
 keeper failed, she kindly came as a temporary helper and so con- 
 tinued till a few months before John Ford's marriage in 1837. 
 And the Superintendent needed all the support he could get 
 from his officers. His staff of teachers, as compared with later 
 times, was numerically weak, and sometimes not strong in 
 intellectual or moral calibre. The provision for the training of 
 teachers amongst Friends was at this time very meagre, and it 
 was impossible to get Friends qualified to teach aU the 
 different classes. 
 
 It may be convenient here to group in chronological order 
 various disconnected events occurring during the Lawrence 
 Street period. By an early minute of the Committee it would 
 
 * The second volume of The Observer contains two articles, by Silvanus 
 Thompson, descriptive of the old School. 
 
HISTORY OF YORK FRIENDS' BOYS' SCHOOL. 33I 
 
 seem that at first some of the boys slept in double beds. Single 
 beds were introduced throughout the School in 1829. The school- 
 rooms were first lighted with gas in 1830. 1831 is signalised by 
 the establishment of the Girls' School in Castlegate, under the 
 superintendence of Hannah Brady. Henceforth the visits of 
 brothers to No. i, Castlegate, became a regular institution. 
 The next year was that in which Asiatic cholera was 
 epidemic in this country. The two schools broke up earlier 
 than usual in consequence, and no examination was held. 
 There is a record that, in 1833, Butter's Spelling book was first 
 used. On August 14th, 1834, the Natural History Society was 
 founded — of this more presently. On January 27th, 1835, steel 
 pens were first employed. What a happy deliverance to the 
 previous quill-pen maker ! In the same year Edwin Moore began 
 his labours as Drawing Master. John Ford's marriage in 1837 
 has been already named. The Workshop was built the same year. 
 In the annual report a memorandum occurs for the first time 
 of the numbers learning different foreign languages. There were 
 forty-six boys in the School, forty-two learning Latin, thirty-three 
 French, ten Greek, and six German. The changed estimation 
 in which the German language is now held is observable. In the 
 prospectus of 1818, German is not named along with French, 
 Latin, Hebrew, and Greek. William Simpson professed to teach 
 Latin, French, Hebrew, Greek, and Italian. He is silent about 
 German. In 1830, two boys only learnt German ; in 1877, '^^^ 
 of a school of sixty-five boys, aU learning Latin and French, all 
 but one learnt German, forty-three Greek. In 1839, ^^ attack of 
 smallpox is recorded. In 1840, the subject of winter vacations 
 is mooted, and they are decided against. The next year the 
 Committee minutes mention the health of the School as causing 
 solicitude ; but the premises are thought quite salubrious. In 
 1842, the resolution to leave Lawrence Street was arrived at. In 
 1844, the Bootham property was purchased, and the School 
 removed there on the 29th of January, 1846. Two hundred 
 and eighty-one boys had entered the School between 1829 and 
 1846. 
 
332 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 In a letter to the editor of John Ford's memoir, James H. Tuke 
 reviews the early years of the administration in Lawrence Street. 
 He refers to the general absence of corporal punishment, and 
 says that in this the School was ahead of public opinion. But 
 that " this government was one which worked easily in all cases, 
 or to the equal satisfaction of all concerned, it would be a mistake 
 to suppose. Many woiold have preferred a good flogging to the 
 prolonged interviews or long sittings in the library, or in 
 seclusion. There was also, which I have no doubt John Ford 
 struggled hard to overcome (and did to a large extent overcome 
 in later years), . . . great irregularity ' of temper,' and at 
 times much petulance was shown. . . . ^\^lilst some 
 carelessness or want of attention was one day treated with good 
 temper, and some allowance made for the stupidity or infirmity 
 of the boy, the same offences were on another day treated 
 with undue harshness, and a class might be suddenly sent to its 
 place, or a book sent at the head of a poor fellow stammering over 
 his Latin or French, which it is needless to say only increased his 
 difi&culty and made the lessons an object of dread and aversion." 
 " On the other hand," says the same writer, " the sunny days 
 were really delightftil ones. To the stupid boy, John Ford would 
 explain the lesson as few others could, so clearly and kindly, that 
 he must needs understand it, and what brought tears one day, 
 caused a smile then. . . . Most delightful also under such 
 influences were the excursions or long walks, when, gathering 
 around John Ford, he would be the centre of all that amused 
 or interested us — a good joke, a good natural quizz, an apt 
 quotation, a few lines of poetry, a race or a jump in which we 
 were of course beaten. Then his deep interest in Natural History, 
 and his quick observation, helped to strengthen and form that 
 love of nature which has always been so prominent a feature in 
 York School." 
 
 The two extracts just read very fairly portray the most 
 characteristic weaknesses and excellences of the early days of 
 John Ford's government. They are the two sides of the same 
 shield. They explain the different sentiments towards the 
 
HISTORY OF YORK FRIENDS* BOYS' SCHOOL. 333 
 
 School entertained by those who were its early inmates. Some 
 boys of robust frame, high spirits, and well strung nerves were 
 thoroughly happy ; others shy, sensitive or timid, suffered much 
 for want of a more steady equable government. 
 
 As years elapsed the tone of the government did rise. Even 
 before the removal to Bootham, the School was enjoying in con- 
 sequence increased public esteem. We should be disposed to 
 attribute John Ford's growth as a teacher, in the first place, to the 
 progressive work of Divine grace in his heart. Then it is difficult 
 to exaggerate the beneficent influence of his happy marriage with 
 Rachel Robson, in 1837. ^^ ^^'^ same year he became one of the 
 first secretaries of the Friends' Educational Society. A long 
 summer day was henceforth annually spent at Ackworth, when 
 weighty educational problems were discussed with rare ability 
 in the circle — ^now so nearly gone — that then met there. These 
 discussions, and the attendant investigations involved, were 
 fruitful in results, both as regards the Superintendent and the 
 Committee of York School. Samuel Tuke and his ancestors 
 had been great founders and supporters of institutions. As he 
 grew older he became increasingly alive to the defects of 
 educational and ecclesiastical machinery for dealing with the 
 varied problems of human character, and with conspicuous 
 success he sought to enunciate the true principles of Christian 
 education, whether at school or in the home.* Simultaneously, 
 the mind of my father, the late Joseph Rowntree, was much 
 occupied in investigating the results of boarding-school education 
 among Friends so far as such results are capable of tabular or 
 statistical expression. In 1843, assisted by correspondents in 
 all parts of the country, he collected particulars of the after-life 
 of many hundreds of Ackworth scholars. The results disclosed 
 were disappointing. Educational machinery might, he believed, 
 attain better moral and religious ends than it was doing. He 
 became more than ever convinced that the quality of the teaching 
 power is the prime factor in the educational capacity of a school. 
 Inferiority in quality and insufficiency of quantity had been at 
 * See Samuel Tuke's Five Papers. 
 
334 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 the root of much of that chronic antagonism between teachers 
 and scholars which was the normal and baneful condition of many 
 schools. The Quarterly Meeting School Fund had already done 
 something towards promoting the training of teachers, and their 
 remuneration had been much increased. The annual report for 
 1842 speaks with much satisfaction of the whole staff in Lawrence 
 Street being for the first time Friends. Silvanus Thompson 
 and Till Adam Smith had both entered in 1841. A few years 
 later, York School reaped much benefit from the work of the 
 Flounders Institute — seven out of the first eleven students were 
 teachers in Bootham. Nor must we omit to notice one other 
 event that greatly influenced John Ford and the school he 
 governed, as also half the schools in Britain. In 1844, th^ first 
 edition of Dr. Arnold's memoirs appeared. When the volumes 
 came into John Ford's hands, they wrought on his susceptible 
 nature with great power. He did not imitate all Arnold's methods 
 — from some he entirely dissented, — ^but the ideal of a Christian 
 school as portrayed by him, the spirit of Rugby's great master, 
 his sermons, and his sayings were constantly present in John 
 Ford's thoughts for the remainder of his life. Thus, as has been 
 already said, not merely was John Ford's religious character 
 progressive, but his whole nature broadened and deepened, whilst 
 his professional aptitude as an instructor grew with practice. 
 Thus it came to pass that at the time the School moved into 
 better premises, a combination of influences united to raise its 
 internal tone and its general efficiency. 
 
 It is time to tell how the migration from Lawrence Street to 
 Bootham came about. In 1841, five young men who had been 
 contemporaries at Lawrence Street in 1840 died at their respective 
 homes. The circumstance may probably have been in great 
 degree accidental ; but it strongly directed attention to the sani- 
 tary condition of the Lawrence Street premises. It was, too, a 
 day of sanitary teform. The laws of health were better under- 
 stood. Men were calculating how many cubic feet of atmospheric 
 air boys needed to Uve in by day and to sleep in by night, and 
 the supply at Lawrence Street was short. After protracted 
 
HISTORY OF YORK FRIENDS' BOYS' SCHOOL. 335 
 
 consultation, the determination to leave Lawrence Street was 
 arrived at. The Quarterly Meeting reaffirmed its decision 
 of 1828 to keep the control of a middle-class school in its own 
 hands, and determined to solicit donations towards the cost of 
 new premises. These were found at last in Bootham, and the 
 mansion of Sir John Johnstone, of Hackness, near Scarborough, 
 passed into the possession of the trustees of the Society of Friends. 
 The cost was moderate. Donations exceeding £2,700 came in, 
 and when surplus land had been sold, and the new buildings and 
 alterations had been completed, there was but a debt of £1,600 on 
 the estate. The winter of 1846 was signalised by a special vaca- 
 tion, the boys leaving the old premises on the 8th of January, 
 and re-assembling in Bootham on the 29th. No longer did ailing 
 boys look out from " Ann's room " on the Barbican, re-buUt 
 in 1684, after the Civil Wars. No longer on " First " and 
 " Fourth " days did the long string of boys pass to and fro through 
 Walmgate, oft-times assailed by the abusive tongues of its juvenile 
 population. No longer was the " prog-woman " to visit the 
 lower class-room on " Seventh-day " afternoons, nor the free- 
 traders of those days to strike for proggish liberty. George 
 Boocock ceased to clip hair in Lawrence Street with his wonted 
 deliberation. Old Hargraves — amicus amicorum — suspended his 
 visits with his pack and budget of news from the boys' homes. 
 " Mother Kidd " no longer dealt in goods " suspected to be run." 
 The change from Lawrence Street to Bootham was evidently 
 acceptable to parents. The admission list became crowded, 
 and exact regulations were framed as to the order in which the 
 names were to be taken. The priority accorded to Yorkshire 
 names was slightly modified. Another influence which helped 
 to crowd the School in the course of a few years was the tide of 
 national prosperity called forth by the repeal of the Com Laws — 
 an event in which one of William Simpson's scholars bore so 
 notable a part. Friends, being mostly engaged in trade, reaped 
 their fuU share of this prosperity, and it has been creditable to 
 their intelligence that they have devoted part of their increased 
 wealth to the higher education of their children. This accounts. 
 
336 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 in part at least, for the prosperity of quite a group of schools 
 conducted for nearly the same class as that for which in 1829 
 York School was almost the only provision. 
 
 The closing months of 1847 were months of anxiety and 
 sadness from the prevalence of epidemic disease. A winter 
 vacation was allowed in consequence. The assembling of the 
 School in the summer of 1849 was delayed by the presence of 
 Asiatic cholera in the country. This year a winter vacation be- 
 came a regular institution. It commenced after Christmas 
 and lasted a fortnight. In 1856, a proposal to prolong it was 
 discussed and rejected. The next year the winter vacation began 
 on the 18th December. In 1859, the winter vacation ceased to be 
 permissive, and lasted three weeks and five days. In 1874, it 
 became four weeks and five days. Hence, the actual school year 
 is now (1879) less than forty-one weeks. In 1829, it was forty- 
 seven. 
 
 Reverting to our chronological notes, examinations by written 
 answers to printed questions came into vogue in 1847 ^^^ 1848. 
 In 1850, the School obtained possession of the Observatory and 
 excellent astronomical apparatus which were mostly paid for by 
 donations. John Ford was moved to stir in the matter, firstly 
 by the loss of the transit instrument which had been lent for 
 several years by Joseph Pease and was now transferred to the 
 Flounders Institute, and by the offer of £100 from Samuel 
 Gumey, who visited Yorkshire by appointment of the Yearly 
 Meeting, and was much interested in the acquaintance he then 
 formed with the School. 
 
 The esteemed French master, Charles Caesar de Meuron, sud- 
 denly died in the summer of 1852. This was a prosperous period in 
 the School's history. Its finances flourished and its debt was con- 
 siderably reduced. In the autumn of this year, tea was introduced 
 as the boys' beverage at their morning and evening meals : a change 
 of doubtful benefit, but one demanded by public opinion. The 
 spring of 1855 had been an anxious time, from the presence of 
 scarlatina, leading to the dispersion of the School. The next 
 year came a visitation of measles, bringing deep sorrow in its 
 
HISTORY OF YORK FRIENDS' BOYS' SCHOOL. 337 
 
 train through its fatal result in the case of Joseph H. Bewley. 
 He was, we believe, the third boy who died in the institution 
 during its fifty years' history. 
 
 In the summer of 1856, important changes took place in the 
 staff of teachers. Fielden Thorp entered as First Class teacher, 
 William Robinson and Till Adam Smith left. The latter had been 
 fifteen years in the service of the institution, and its prosperity 
 had been promoted by his energy and force of character. The 
 late Henry Vincent styled T. A. Smith " a fossil Tory." 
 Undoubtedly his proclivities, both poUtical and ecclesiastical, 
 were conservative. But he was an independent thinker, and 
 could welcome new ideas in science and literature. He was a 
 good teacher, and won and retained the friendship of many of his 
 pupils. The books and bookcase given him on his retirement 
 were a well-merited tribute to his worth. And here let me say a 
 word on a work which is a lasting mommient of his industry and 
 ability. In 1850, a manuscript school periodical. The Observer, 
 was started under TiU Adam Smith's editorship, and has been 
 sustained to the present day, under the successive editorship 
 of Fielden Thorp, Thomas Walton, John F. Fryer, SUvanus 
 P. Thompson and William Edward Waller.* In looking afresh 
 through some of the early numbers, their ability and varied interest 
 are very apparent. The frontispiece to vol. ii. from the pen of 
 Henry Tuke is capital, and as is aptly said in the text, " fulle of 
 righte wittie conceits." 
 
 The anxieties and sorrows of 1855 and 1856 led to the with- 
 drawal of John and Rachel Ford from residence at the School 
 in the summer of 1857, Fielden Thorp becoming resident master, 
 and Sarah Robinson superintending the domestic arrangements. 
 The following year the suite of school-rooms was increased by 
 the building of a new class-room at the north end of the 
 teachers' sitting-room. 1858 will be interesting to the friends 
 of total abstinence, as the last year in which any entry 
 under the head of wine and beer appears in the accounts. 
 
 * In December, 1891, the late Benjamin Le Tall succeeded to the editor- 
 ship, and in June, 1892, Arthur Rowntree, the present editor. — [Editor.] 
 
338 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 This item had amounted to as much as £36 in a year, 
 and dwindled to 9s. before it disappeared. The erection of warm 
 baths, after being under consideration for some time, was Ccirried 
 out in i860 at an outlay of ;f455. The next year the infrequent 
 entry occurs of the receipt of a gift of £50, from the late Robert 
 Tindal. We may pass lightly over the purchase of more land 
 in 1864, and come to 1865, at the close of which John Ford finally 
 retired from the superintendence, and Fielden and Amy Jsme 
 Thorp became heads of the institution.* It will be fresh in the 
 remembrance of many that, in the autumn of 1866, John Ford 
 was entertained at dinner by his old scholars in these rooms, 
 receiving from them various tokens of their affectionate regard. 
 With what cordiality and tact did Thomas Whitwell preside on 
 that occasion. How we miss his manly presence amongst us to- 
 day ! 
 
 The year 1865 was signalised by an examination of the School 
 by the Schools Inquiry Commissioners. Minute inquiries as to 
 the character of the education given, the classes of society 
 contributing to the School, the fees paid, and other details, were 
 replied to, both by the Superintendent and by the Secretary of the 
 Committee. By the wish of the Commissioners, J. G. Fitch, Esq., 
 visited both the Girls' and Boys' Schools. He said in his report : — 
 
 " There are two institutions in the city of York which have been 
 established for the use of the richer members of the Society, and in 
 which a more advanced education is given. At Bootham, in York, 
 there are fifty-nine pupils, all of whom are boarders. There are five 
 resident masters. There I found fifteen of the pupils reading Greek, 
 twenty-four learning German, while all except four of the youngest 
 had commenced Latin and French. The classical course includes 
 prose composition, but not versification. In point of grammatical 
 accuracy, and in knowledge of the meaning of the more familiar 
 writers, as Horace, Xenophon, and Livy, the boys at Bootham were 
 on a par with pupils of the best grammar schools. Their general 
 English and scientific education, however, was far more extensive. 
 Modem History, English Literature, and Mathematics received 
 far more than the usual share of attention ; while the provision 
 
 * In 1875, these Friends were succeeded by John F. and Isabella C. 
 Fryer, and, in 1899, by Arthur and Ellen H. Rowntree, the present heads 
 of the School. — [Editor]. 
 
HISTORY OF YORK FRIENDS' BOYS' SCHOOL. 339 
 
 made for the systematic study of Natural Science is more ample than 
 in any school I ever visited. There is an excellent Observatory, 
 erected and furnished at a cost of nearly ;£30O, in which the boys are 
 accustomed to make and register astronomical observations. In 
 Chemistry, Botany, and Animal Physiology, regular courses of 
 conversational lectures are given, which are amply illustrated by 
 diagrams and experiments, and duly supplemented by book work." 
 
 After describing the Mount School, Mr. Fitch concludes, 
 " Next to the gentleness of the moral discipline, nothing character- 
 ises the schools of the Society of Friends more than the style of the 
 teaching which prevails in them all. I noticed on the part of all 
 the teachers a professional aptitude, and a skill in oral explanation, 
 and in collective teaching, which are very unusual in higher schools. 
 I attribute this to the fact that the Friends are the only religious 
 body in which there is a distinct recognition of the need for training, 
 and a definite provision to meet that need." 
 
 . . . Lovell Squire came to Lawrence Street as a teacher 
 in the summer of 1829. Amongst other ways of interesting the 
 boys in Natural History, he wrote out monthly a little periodical 
 called The Naturalist. Probably it recorded such achievements 
 as the discovery of Listera cordata at Langwith, and of Crocus 
 vernus — alas ! long since disappeared — on Knavesmire. In 1834, 
 Lovell Squire left York, but the seed he had sown flourished, and 
 in the harvest-tide of that year the Natiural History Society was 
 formed, John Ford being President ; Thomas M. Hope, Vice- 
 President ; Henry Pickering, Treasurer ; Thomas Richardson, 
 Secretary ; Thomas Allis, Henry Baines, Lovell Squire, and Giles 
 Munby, Honorary Members. John King has kindly lent me the 
 original minutes recording the foundation of the Society. Amongst 
 the first office-bearers occur the names of John W. Cash, Henry 
 Ellis, James Wilson, Thomas Spence, Joseph Taylor, John King, 
 Robert Crewdson Jowitt, Alfred H. Spence, and Abram G. Davis. 
 The Society has lived on and done an excellent work down to the 
 present day. There have been fashions as respects the depart- 
 ment of Natural History studied — sometimes botany has been 
 in the ascendant — sometimes conchology or entomology. Some- 
 times all have received a fair share of attention, and sometimes 
 all have flagged^ We remark, in the report of 1848, a paragraph. 
 
340 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 evidently written by John Ford, affirming his continued attach- 
 ment to the Association as the result of observation on its auxiliary 
 effects in education, extending the range of rational and interesting 
 pursuit, inducing habits of " inquiry and observation, order and 
 arrangement, greatly to be prized in the common concerns of life." 
 The after experience of many confirms this testimony. Our 
 Latin has nearly filed, we might perhaps be plucked over a simple 
 equation, but the love of plants, of shells, insects, or birds grows 
 with longer years, and what little aptitude any acquired in the 
 Essay meeting, serves them in good stead almost every day- 
 That " Nature never did betray the heart that loved her " was 
 the faith of Wordsworth, and has become the faith of many from 
 what they have learnt in Lawrence Street and Bootham. Within 
 the last two years the Natural History Journal, edited by 
 J. Edmund Clark, B.Sc, has kept its readers informed of the 
 pursuits of the pupils in this and other schools, and shows that the 
 good work is sustained in perhaps a more intelligent spirit than 
 formerly. 
 
 Contemporary history, it has been said, is a species of stale 
 news. Unwilling to be a purveyor of such a commodity, we 
 shall give but the briefest notice of school history for the past ten 
 years. It may be worth recording that in 1865 the Sequel 
 was laid aside as a reading-book. It had survived The English 
 Reader five years. The Introduction sustains a lingering exist- 
 ence, but the present generation of school-boys is almost ignorant 
 of those compilations of Lindley Murray's with whicfk their 
 fathers were so familiar. His grammar was gradually superseded 
 after i860. In connection with literary changes, it may here be 
 mentioned that the new pronunciation of Latin was begun about 
 1871, and in a year or two after, all the boys were talking about 
 Kikero. 
 
 In 1871, Fielden Thorp left the school-house, being succeeded 
 by John F. Fryer as resident master. Fielden Thorp relinquished 
 the superintendence in 1875. The autumn of the previous year 
 had also been marked by the retirement of SUvanus Thompson — 
 after a service of thirty-three years. A number of his scholars 
 
HISTORY OF YORK FRIENDS' BOYS' SCHOOL. 34I 
 
 indicated their appreciation of his faithful labours. In 1875, 
 John Ford died. 
 
 The last three years have seen increased attention devoted 
 to preparation for examinations. Philip Thompson, in 1865, 
 was the first Bootham scholar who went direct from the School 
 to the matriculation examination of London University. In 1876, 
 1877, and 1878, eleven boys matriculated. The Science and Art 
 examinations of South Kensington and those of the Cambridge 
 University Extension Scheme have also been submitted to by 
 many of the boys with much success. This is an age of 
 examinations and inspections. WhUst some homage is due to 
 public opinion, let me here put in a plea that in the future, as 
 in the past, York School may not rely on the shining but often 
 misleading results of examinations, but that it wiU maintain a 
 policy of its own, and especially not allow Natural History to be 
 elbowed out. There are always more boys duU than clever, and 
 it should be the ambition of the true teacher that this majority 
 be at least as carefully taught as the minority. 
 
 And here this imperfect chronicle must end. The preparation 
 of it has been a work of love and of great interest to the writer- 
 Had time allowed, I should like to have spoken on other matters 
 that have had to be passed in silence — of games, for instance ; 
 of cricket pursued up to 1846 on a field behind Lawrence Street, 
 now covered with houses ; of the recent gift of a pavilion for the 
 use of the players at Bootham ; of footbaU, not allowed till 
 October 13th, 1862, when, after a visit to Rugby, John Ford 
 introduced it and gave the first "kick off." The finances of the 
 School present many points of interest. In these days of stoppages 
 and insolvency, it might have been gratifying to have told of a 
 turn-over of above £120,000 with bad debts of less than fifty 
 pounds. Again, a few paragraphs on the servants of the 
 institution would have been interesting. The first man who 
 cleaned knives and boots became a B.A. of Dublin University ; 
 the second a Congregational minister ; the third, now a retired 
 gentleman living on his property, we have had the pleasure of 
 welcoming amongst us to-day. It would have been gratifying 
 
342 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 to have recognised the faithful labours of nurses like Ann Land and 
 Jane Maltby. Again, there are other friends of the School whose 
 names have hardly been mentioned. How much have the Natural 
 History pursuits of the boys been indebted to Thomas Allis and 
 to James Backhouse — ^father and son— all eminent in their 
 respective walks. William Alexander instituted the system of 
 account-keeping still pursued. David Priestman was so useful 
 at the time of the removal to Bootham in planning and over- 
 seeing the alterations, that he was known as " the commissioner 
 of woods and forests." Dr. Williams, in his double capacity of 
 medical attendant and member of the Committee, Joseph Spence, 
 John and Samuel Priestman, Benjamin Seebohm, John Hipsley, 
 Edward Smith and many others all rendered good service. 
 
 Any historian interested in his theme is liable to the besetment 
 of unduly magnifying its importance. Tennyson's sententious 
 lines," Ye think the rustic cackle of your bourg, the murmur of the 
 world," have often recurred as a warning against this besetment. 
 Yet we think the experience of fifty years indicates that the 
 founders of this School in 1829 ^^ ^°t over-estimate the influence 
 it might exert. As respects their own Quarterly Meeting, 335 
 of the 967 boys, or 35 per cent., have come from within its limits. 
 
 Some of those who have been pupils here are no longer 
 connected with the Society of Friends, but with the same 
 cordiality with which we desire that Church or Nonconformist 
 schools may be good schools, can they join in desiring the continued 
 prosperity of this — that it may do its part in fulfilling the prayer 
 yet heard in the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, " that there 
 never may be wanting a supply of men duly qualified to serve God 
 both in Church and State." 
 
 So, linking the sister-institution on the Mount with that in 
 
 Bootham, we appropriate to them the words of Whittier : — 
 
 Long live the good schools ! giving out year by year 
 Recruits to true manhood and womanhood dear : 
 Brave boys, m.odest maidens, in beauty sent forth, 
 The living epistles and proof of their worth ! * 
 
 * Adapted from The Quaker Alumni. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL POLICY OF FRIENDS.* 
 
 TT was sometimes remarked a few years ago that Friends had 
 lost their interest in their own schools, and would now 
 only subscribe freely to Home and Foreign Missions, and to 
 distinctly religious work. The present writer never accepted 
 this view, and its want of foundation has been shown by the 
 munificent donations recently given to the Friends' schools in 
 England and Ireland. The formation of Old Scholars' Associations 
 in connection with almost all these institutions, and the extension 
 of their work, are indications in the same direction. We therefore 
 approach the discussion of our subject from the standpoint of one 
 who believes the Society, as a whole, to be thoroughly interested 
 in education, and desirous to secure the efficiency of its teaching 
 machinery. At the same time there is reason to think that this 
 is not in all respects so satisfactory as could be desired, and 
 various suggestions are made from time to time for its modifica- 
 tion. It is probably true that some of the educational zeal, to 
 which we have borne witness, does in a sense run to waste. The 
 ground for profitable discussion will be cleared if the objects 
 aimed at in the Friends' education can be defined, and the persons 
 intended to be benefited determined. The methods to be adopted 
 depend substantially upon the view that may be taken on these 
 points. 
 
 Perhaps the first fact which impresses one in reviewing the 
 educational provision of the Society is the smallness of the 
 
 * Repriated, with additions, from the Friends' Quafterly Examiner of 
 April, 1900, with a supplement from The Friend of 30th of June, 1899. 
 
 343 
 
344 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 constituency from which its schools are recruited. The total 
 number of children in all the Friends' schools in the United 
 Kingdom is smaller than that in some single Board Schools. And, 
 further, a very appreciable proportion of the pupils in the Society's 
 schools are not Friends by membership or profession. These 
 facts induced a writer in the Friends' Quarterly Examiner* to 
 advocate the closing of one or more of the schools, a proposal which 
 was resisted chiefly on the ground that these institutions afford 
 a field for missionary labour, not less promising than those 
 in which many Friends are working in Mohammedan or heathen 
 communities. Small, however, as is the number of young people 
 connected with Friends in this country, their right education is 
 on that account only the more important. The cardinal matters 
 for consideration would seem to be three : — 
 
 (i) What is the character and the extent of the Society's 
 educational duty to its young people ? 
 
 (2) How far is this duty performed ? 
 
 (3) What steps are required to make the performance of this 
 duty more efficient ? 
 
 (i) " The right education of youth " was one of the primary 
 objects of the early meetings for discipUne.-f The subject is 
 discussed at some length in the Yearly Meeting Epistle of 1709, 
 a portion of which appears in Christian Discipline : — 
 
 " Where Friends want ability in the world, their Monthly and 
 Quarterly Meetings are desired to assist them ; that the children 
 of the poor may have due help of education, instruction, and necessary 
 learning ; and that children (both of rich and poor) may be early 
 provided with industrious employments, that they may not grow up 
 in idleness, looseness, and vice, but that, being seasoned with the 
 Truth, sanctified of God, and taught our holy self-denying way, 
 they may appear a reputation to our holy profession, the comfort 
 of their honest parents, instrumental to the glory of God, and the 
 good of the generations coming on."} 
 
 Though not specifically stated in so many words, the foregoing 
 passage virtually recognises the principle that the education of 
 
 * 1897, page 503. f Christian Discipline, ii., xviii. 
 
 X Christian Discipline, ii., 72. 
 
THE EDUCATIONAL POLICY OF FRIENDS. 345 
 
 all the children of Friends is a matter in which the Society is in- 
 terested. The line of membership was not very clear in 1709, 
 and the almost family relationship which existed at that time 
 amongst those who made a common profession of faith and 
 practice, led them to take cognisance even of much smaller 
 matters than that of education. It appears to us that the principle 
 enunciated is a true one, and that it should underlie the whole 
 educational policy of Friends. The method of its application 
 must necessarily vary. A Query, laid aside in 1875, formerly 
 served to keep alive the recognition of the principle of which we 
 are speaking : — " Are the necessities of the poor amongst you 
 properly inspected and relieved ; and is good care taken of the 
 education of their offspring ? " It was probably quite uninten- 
 tional that the withdrawal of this question should lessen the 
 attention given to education, and it is true that kindred inquiries 
 do find a place in Queries VI. and XI., but they are less definite, 
 and the discontinuance of the answering of all the Queries may 
 have further tended to leave the whole subject in an indefinite 
 shape in the minds of Friends. " Do those who have children 
 . . . train them up as self-denying followers of the Lord 
 Jesus ? " " Do you as a Church exercise a loving and watchful 
 care over your younger members, promoting their instruction 
 in fundamental Christian truth, and in the Scriptural grounds of 
 our religious principles ? " * The first of these questions is 
 chiefly suggestive of home teaching, whilst the second refers 
 principally to young persons above the school age. We think 
 then that the extent of the Society's educational duty reaches 
 out to all the children of its people, and that the character of 
 the education given will be dominated by the nature of its own 
 conception of Christian truth. To this we will return later. 
 
 (2) In considering how far the Society is practically recog- 
 nising the principle we have been defining, it will be desirable to 
 take note of a great change which has been progressive during 
 
 * This Query now reads so as to include all young people regularly 
 associated with Friends in public worship, whether in membership or not, 
 as follows : — " Do you, as a Church, exercise a loving and watchful care 
 over the young people in your different congregations," &c. — [Editor.] 
 
346 
 
 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 many years in the numbers of children joining the Society in Great 
 Britain through birth, or admission as minors. It will not be 
 necessary to bring forward many figures ; the salient facts are 
 apparent on contrasting the relative membership and number of 
 births at the beginning and the end of the nineteenth century, 
 and in 1861, the year when these figures were first collected and 
 published by London Yearly Meeting : — 
 
 
 Members. 
 
 Atten- 
 ders. 
 
 Total. 
 
 IRTHS. 
 
 Members. Mem°bJrs. 
 
 Admission 
 as Minors. 
 
 1799 
 I86I 
 1899 
 
 19,800 
 13.844 
 17.031 
 
 8,000 
 3.190 
 7.904 
 
 27,800 
 17.034 
 24.93 s 
 
 486 
 283 
 IS7 
 
 204 
 
 II 
 60 
 
 The broad facts apparent are that a hundred years ago the 
 children annually entering the Society in Britain were about 500, 
 that by the middle of the century the number had declined to 
 about 300, and at its close to 220. At the same three periods 
 the admissions of adults on application were respectively " fewer 
 than 50," 69, and 294. A century ago go per cent, of the persons 
 entering the Society were children ; now they are about 40 per 
 cent. Several reasons have contributed to bring about these 
 changes, the chief being the increase in the numbers of persons 
 appljdng for admission, and the diminution in the numbers of 
 children registered as members consequent on the increased number 
 of families in which one parent only is in membership.* 
 
 By a recent enumeration in one Monthly Meeting of about 
 five hundred members, i.e. one thirty-fourth of London Yearly 
 Meeting, it has been ascertained that the number of children of 
 school age not in membership exceeds that of those in membership, 
 and this is now probably the case throughout Great Britain. 
 The figures in the recent Tabular Statements would lead one 
 to anticipate a majority of non-member children, and the propor- 
 tion must be increased annually. There must be many hundreds 
 of Friend children of school age whose names are not upon the 
 
 * See Christian Discipline, " Membership," ii., 16. 
 
THE EDUCATIONAL POLICY OF FRIENDS. 347 
 
 Society's registers. Over a large proportion of these the Society is, 
 we believe, exercising but a slight educational influence. In the 
 Friends' Quarterly Examiner for 1897* a return was given showing 
 that in eight English Friends' schools there were then 448 members, 
 159 connected with Friends, 233 unconnected, and 81 vacancies ; 
 total school places, 921. The present figures are not very 
 different. Including the schools at Leighton Park and at York, 
 there will be in all about 600 pupils Friends, and 450 not Friends, 
 200 of whom may probably be connected. Evidently there are 
 some hundreds of children, one parent at least being a member, 
 not in the Friends' schools, f For this state of things there are 
 several reasons : — 
 
 (a) The Society's public schools do not as a rule admit children 
 not in membership on the same terms as members. 
 
 {b) The Society's of&cers, the Overseers, do not consider 
 themselves charged with the duty of seeing to the education of 
 non-member children. 
 
 (c) The excellence of the Board School teaching and of that of 
 the middle-class High Schools has lessened the desire for education 
 in the Friends' schools, and indisposed many parents to make the 
 pecuniary sacrifices required for obtaining it. 
 
 Here is the explanation of the parodoxical fact that a Society 
 of 17,000 persons is apparently supplying fewer children for its 
 public schools than did one of 14,000. This is very unsatisfactory, 
 and unpromising for the future of the Society. The great im- 
 provement in the general standard of popular education is a matter 
 of congratulation, but we cannot anticipate that the outcome in 
 character will be that which Friends desire, where literary instruc- 
 tion is not associated with spiritual Christian teaching in the 
 home or the school, or in both. The Friends' children at the Board 
 Schools are frequently less favourably circumstanced as respects 
 religious instruction than those of other denominations, inasmuch 
 as the great majority of these attend the Sunday schools of the 
 
 * Page 504- 
 
 f A return made in 1900 showed that there were then 1,846 children in 
 membership, and 1,161 children one or both of whose parents were mem- 
 bers, between the ages of five and fifteen years. — [Editor.] 
 
348 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 body with which their parents are associated. We submit then 
 that the answer to this branch of our inquiry must be that the 
 Society at the present time is by no means concerning itself, 
 as it ought to do, in the education of all its children. 
 
 (3) And this brings us to the consideration how the Society 
 can more efficiently exert an enlightened and helpful influence 
 over the education of its children. The first step would seem to 
 be that the Yearly Meeting should very distinctly reaffirm the 
 principle that it desired for all the children associated with it 
 an education that should be religious, in the simple, spiritual and 
 practical sense in which Friends use the word.* The questions 
 suggested in Queries VI. and XI. might be expanded and made 
 more definite, so as distinctly to include both home and school 
 teaching. May we venture the suggestion that the last clause of 
 Query VI. be withdrawn from its present position, and that Query 
 XI. should run : — " Do you as a Church exercise a loving and 
 watchful care over aU the children of your members, encouraging 
 parents by the ministries both of the home and the school to train 
 up their offspring as self-denying followers of the Lord Jesus, 
 instructing them in fundamental Christian truth and in the reasons 
 for our religious faith and practice ? " Correspondingly, para- 
 graph 17 of the Advices might be expanded : — " Watch with 
 Christian tenderness over the opening minds of your children, 
 whether at home, at school, or at college. Let them be carefully 
 instructed in the knowledge of the Holy Scriptures ; inure them 
 to habits of self-restraint and filial obedience ; and seek for ability 
 to imbue their hearts with the love of their Heavenly Father, 
 their Redeemer, and their Sanctifier." 
 
 If the Society heartily accepted the principle we have indicated, 
 it would then find methods for giving practical expression to its 
 concern. Some modification of existing regulations, or practice, as 
 respects membership might be required. There is no principle 
 apparent in the present state of confusion by which, out of ten 
 Friends' children, six may be non-members and four members. 
 
 * This suggestion has been carried out, and Query xi. has been 
 enlarged in scope. See page 345». — [Editor.] 
 
THE EDUCATIONAL POLICY OF FRIENDS. 349 
 
 There is no occasion to drift into a birthright membership dis- 
 cussion here, for so far as we observe there is practical agreement 
 that children should have the nurture and privileges of Church 
 association. The difference of opinion arises when consideration 
 comes to be given to the procedure advisable when the young 
 people cease to be children. That consideration lies outside the 
 scope of the present paper, and may safely be left. But we 
 are concerned with the status of children in the Society, and, 
 to end the present anomalous state of things, we suggest : — 
 
 {a) That for educational purposes, unless the parents shall 
 object, all the children of Friends be accounted members, though 
 only one parent may be in membership. 
 
 (6) That in the forthcoming definition of the duties of Over- 
 seers, these Friends be invited to take a practical interest in the 
 education of edl the children belonging to their respective 
 congregations.* 
 
 (c) That a carefully drawn declaratory minute be issued by 
 the Yearly Meeting, affirming the principle that whilst the care of 
 the poor and the education of children are duties which the 
 Society feels it a privilege to recognise and assist in, no Friends 
 possess the right to claim pecuniary assistance, when, in the 
 judgment of the local meetings, their requirements are adequately 
 met by the national provisions for poor relief or education. 
 
 In 1892 a scheme was approved by the Yeeirly Meeting 
 which aimed at giving a Friends' boarding-school education 
 to all the children of Friends. It failed for two reasons: 
 (i) its costliness ; and (2) because of a widely-spread hesitation 
 as to whether a boarding-school education is really the best for 
 all children, particularly those coming from artisan homes. It 
 always seemed regrettable to the present writer that a proposal 
 affirmed in these strong terms by the Yearly Meeting lapsed in the 
 way it did : — " This meeting recognises the vast importance of 
 this subject, not only in its immediate relation to the children 
 
 * The Duties of Overseers, adopted by the Yearly Meeting of 1900, 
 include "care of the poor, and careful thought for their children's 
 education." — [Editor.] 
 
350 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 themselves, but in its bearing upon the future well-being of our 
 Society. This meeting approves the recommendations," etc.* 
 It is, however, obvious that five hundred children might soon have 
 come under the provision of the scheme, who would have required 
 £10,000 a year finding for their education. We do not therefore 
 think it possible, and we doubt whether it is desirable, to aim at 
 giving a boarding-school education to aU the children of Friends. 
 It does, however, seem feasible for the education of every 
 Friend's child to be a matter in which the Society is concerned 
 and which it will help to promote. Instead of having one system 
 for all, we would leave every case to be dealt with locally by 
 parents and the Overseers. There would, we think, be many 
 cases in which the Board School would supply all the literary 
 teaching required. Then, to supplement the home religious 
 teaching, we advocate the establishment of a First-day School 
 for the children of Friends in every meeting where these are found. 
 WhUst believing it impossible for a small denomination to 
 provide an education for all its children, quite independent of 
 that furnished by the State, the example of the Roman Catholics, 
 who keep such a hold on the education of their people's children, 
 is very significant. They do this for a purpose which seems to 
 us mischievous and derogatory to the true dignity of man. Could 
 not Friends do the same for the very opposite object — that of 
 nurturing their children in a spiritual, non-sacerdotal faith, 
 giving the widest play to the principle of individual responsibility ? 
 Whilst we believe there are many children who will not require 
 a boarding-school course, it will no doubt be found that there are 
 many others who, from the circumstances of their homes, their 
 want of parental care, the absence of suitable local schools, and 
 from other causes, are most advantageously brought up in boarding- 
 schools. There are other cases in which a period at a Friends' 
 school may usefully crown a day school course, for the child 
 who has passed the fifth and sixth standards. Probably there 
 might be a sufficient number of such scholars to keep the existing 
 schools filled with children of the character for whom they were 
 ♦ Extracts from the Minutes of the Yearly Meeting, 1892, 36. 
 
THE EDUCATIONAL POLICY OF FRIENDS. 35I 
 
 first instituted. And just as we believe the solution of the existing 
 problem is to be found in local action, exerted through Monthly 
 Meetings and their Overseers, so we would leave the question 
 of funds to be dealt with in the same way. In the Monthly Meeting 
 with which the present writer is most familiar there are five or 
 six funds, all small, which are resorted to for educational purposes. 
 Many such exist. It might, however, be necessary to establish 
 in addition a central fund to be employed where no other source 
 is available. Its administration should be placed in the hands of 
 a small body interested in education, who are prepared to devote 
 time and labour to their work.* 
 
 These suggestions are open to one obvious criticism — they 
 would entail a great deal of labour. That is true. But it is for 
 an object which deserves labour. Probably no part of the service 
 of the Overseers might be more fruitful in results. Naturally a 
 great deal would devolve upon the women in that station. The 
 considerations that would continually come up in their con- 
 ferences, whether A, B, and C woiold be most helped by being 
 taught at the Board School or by going to one of the Friends' 
 schools, would be of constant interest and importance. We 
 should hope that Friends would be found who would be willing 
 to devote no little time and thought to the matter. At present 
 the devotion exhibited by the members of the Friends' school 
 committees, probably some three hundred persons, is admirable ; 
 but one cannot but feel that it is somewhat disproportioned to 
 the magnitude of the work. Members of School Boards dealing 
 with thousands of children are apt to retire from the Friends' 
 committees dealing only with scores or hundreds. The opinion 
 is sometimes expressed that the Ackworth School Committee 
 would be quite competent to administer all the work of the London 
 School Board. At any rate, we think, with all the interest in 
 education now pulsating through the Society of Friends, the 
 
 * The Friends' Educational Endowment Fund (administered by 
 direction of the Central Education Committee) now has a capital of about 
 ;^5,8oo. The income is, however, used for supplementing the salaries of 
 teachers of ability and experience in the Society's boarding-schools. — 
 [Editor.] 
 
332 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 men and women should be found who would work out the principle 
 that the educiition of all its children is a matter in which the 
 Society is vitally interested. 
 
 Another department of the Friends' educational policy which 
 deserves very careful thought is the character of the education 
 given in the Society's schools, particularly on its religious side. 
 The query often presents — ^what have been the results of the 
 education given in the Friends' schools ? It is extremely difficult 
 to generalise on the work of a century and a quarter. We think 
 the literary and perhaps the moral results of some of our public 
 schools have fully realised the hopes of their founders ; but, 
 speaking generally, it must be admitted that few, if any, of these 
 institutions have obviously strengthened the Society to the 
 extent which had been hoped for and anticipated. This does 
 not, however, imply that the fault has necessarily been with the 
 schools, for (a) the founders' anticipations may have been 
 unreasonable ; or (6) there may have been external influences 
 over which the schools had no control, which went far to neutralise 
 their work ; or (c) the work of the schools may have been fatally 
 injured by neglect in early home training, or by deficient means 
 for edification after school has been left. 
 
 We entertain no doubt that, as a matter of fact, all these and 
 other influences that might be named have militated against 
 the success of the Friends' schools, and that no review of their 
 work will be fair or adequate which disregards them. Still, for 
 our present purpose it is unnecessary to pursue this branch of the 
 subject further, for it wiU hardly be maintained by anyone that the 
 religious teaching of the Friends' schools is incapable of improve- 
 ment. That the character and methods of this teaching have 
 undergone many changes in the last hundred and twenty years 
 is familiar to everyone acquainted with the history of our schools. 
 We believe these changes have been in the main wise, and that 
 some of the methods formerly adopted were most unlikely to attain 
 the ends desired. Still, the fact that many changes, largely 
 suggested by the results of experience, have been made, raises a 
 presumption that further improvement is attainable. The Friends' 
 
THE EDUCATIONAL POLICY OF FRIENDS. 353 
 
 schools have no raison d'etre apart from their relationship to a 
 religious society. If there are valid reasons demanding the 
 maintenance of the Society of Friends, then the reasons are 
 valid for maintaining its schools. And the converse must also be 
 true. We have here to meet, and, if possible, to satisfy, two 
 classes of objectors — (i) those who say " the days of denomina- 
 tional schools are past, our sympathies are with national public 
 schools " ; and (2) those teachers who avow that their ambition 
 is to " turn out men and women, not Quakers." The answer 
 to the first class of objectors is that practically the national schools 
 they speak of are as denominational as, or more so than, those 
 of the Friends ; they are dominated by the Anglican conception 
 of Christianity instead of by the more spiritual conception of the 
 Friends. The answer to the second class of critics is that, whilst 
 agreeing with them that the outcome of schools should be men and 
 women, the question still remains — what sort of men and women ? 
 Christian men and women it will be generally conceded, for "a 
 Christian is the highest style of man." But we press the inquiry 
 one step further — what kind of Christian ? There are manifestly 
 forms of Christianity which do but illustrate Christ's words : " If 
 the light that is in you be darkness, how great is that darkness." 
 Such was the Christianity which praised God for the massacre 
 of St. Bartholomew ; such was the Christianity which hung 
 Mary Dyer on Boston Common. Such is much of the continental 
 Christianity of to-day which makes men agnostic and women 
 superstitious. Very different should be the ideals aimed at in a 
 Friends' school, and how to compass them deserves the best 
 thought of our teachers. The subject might very well occupy 
 an entire article, and cannot be discussed adequately at the end 
 of this. Some of the American colleges are apparently more 
 successful than most of our institutions in training Christian 
 workers. A comparison of our methods and theirs might be 
 suggestive.* In the Friends' Quarterly Examiner for 1899, p. 542, 
 
 * Many of the Friends' Colleges in America keep their students to 
 twenty years of age and upwards, and are thus able to exert an influence 
 which a school with a leaving age of sixteen or seventeen can hardly do. — 
 [Editor.] 
 
 24 
 
354 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 the complete change of opinion which has come over Friends with 
 respect to the use of doctrinal catechisms for the inculcation of 
 religious truth was pointed out. On recently referring to a paper 
 on Religious Instruction, read before the Friends' Educational 
 Society in 1839, ^^ ^^'^ ^^ stated that Richard Allen's Catechism 
 was then used in all the Friends' schools in Ireland (p. 16). The 
 reasons for the disuse of catechisms are weighty, but we think 
 sufficient attention has not been given to the provision of proper 
 substitutes. It will hardly be a contentious proposition that it 
 is the province of schools to teach facts, and in relation to Christian 
 faith and practice what facts are more pertinent than those of the 
 history of the Christian Church ? It is one of the merits of William 
 Penn's introduction to Fox's Journal that he shows the connection 
 between the whole history of the Christian Church and the rise 
 of the Friends. He expands this thought in his Primitive 
 Christianity Revived. Is not this the side from which the history of 
 Friends and their whole position should be approached ? Is it 
 not worthy of consideration whether, in schools for elder children 
 particularly, the departmental system of teaching does not suggest 
 a more careful instruction in Church history than is commonly 
 given ; and whether there might not be a very useful place for 
 special teachers or lecturers who should devote much of their 
 time to this one subject ? 
 
 In conclusion, may we briefly restate the chief heads in the 
 educational policy that has been advocated, adding one or two 
 suggestions that do not call for discussion ? 
 
 (i) That the Society should distinctly afi&rm the position 
 that it is interested in the education of aW the children of its people ; 
 and desires that they should enjoy an upbringing under conditions 
 favourable to the formation of Christian character, whilst 
 disclaiming liability, as a matter of obligation, to provide any 
 particular form of poor relief or of education. 
 
 (2) That, to give practical effect to this desire : — 
 
 (a) The Queries and Advices be so modified as periodically 
 to invite all Friends to consider the subject of the education of 
 children in its relation both to parents and to the Society. 
 
THE EDUCATIONAL POLICY OF FRIENDS. 355 
 
 (b) That the Overseers be charged with the duty of giving 
 constant attention to the educational needs of children, assisting 
 parents in such ways as they may find to be desirable.* 
 
 (c) That the rules or usages affecting the membership of 
 children be so modified as to place all the children of Friends, 
 whether both or only one parent be in membership, on the same 
 footing in respect to educational privileges. 
 
 (d) That one or more central educational bodies be created, 
 or the present Central Education Board be strengthened, to 
 supplement local efforts, and to promote unity of educational 
 action throughout the Society ; such central educational council 
 to be furnished with adequate funds, f 
 
 (e) This central body to report directly to the Yearly Meeting, 
 which should devote one or more sessions to education every year ; 
 these to take the place of the present Educational Conference. 
 
 (/) That First-day Schools for the children of Friends and 
 attenders be established in every meeting where they do not 
 exist, and in which children are to be found. 
 
 (3) That Friend teachers and school managers be urged to 
 the continued consideration of the methods and conditions under 
 which religious instruction is given, with the hope of making 
 that instruction, both in boarding and in First-day Schools, more 
 fruitful than it has hitherto been in fashioning character after the 
 ideals of a spiritual, a practical, and a non-sacerdotal conception 
 of the Christian faith. 
 
 It wUl be seen that these proposals involve the creation of very 
 little fresh machinery. Their success would chiefly depend on 
 the extent to which they were incorporated into the work of 
 existing administrative bodies, particularly Monthly Meetings 
 and the local Overseers. They contemplate the recognition of 
 an easily-understood principle by the Society, which already 
 
 * Sections 6 and / in the list of Duties of Overseers, adopted by the 
 Yearly Meeting of 1900, refer to this subject. — [Editor.] 
 
 f In 1902 the Central Education Board weis reorganised on a repre- 
 sentative basis, as the Central Education Committee. This body has, 
 however, to provide its own funds. It carries out the suggestions made 
 in (e). — [Editor.] 
 
356 
 
 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 possesses the machinery for giving effect to it. They would, we 
 beUeve, give unity and cohesion to the whole educational 
 machinery of Friends, and might, under the Divine blessing, be 
 greatly helpful to their schools, to their children, and to the 
 whole Society. 
 
 The Relation of the Society of Friends to the Children 
 OF ITS Members. 
 
 The Yearly Meeting has now collected the figures which 
 appear in the Tabular Statements for thirty-eight years. During 
 this period the number of births reported exhibits a continuous 
 decline, as wiU be seen from the following statement, compiled 
 from the annual returns : — 
 
 
 Average No. 
 
 
 Total 
 
 Admissions 
 
 Periods of 
 
 of births 
 
 Admissions 
 
 admissions 
 
 of adults 
 
 five years. 
 
 reported to 
 
 as minors 
 
 of 
 
 on 
 
 
 Y.M. 
 
 
 cliildren. 
 
 application. 
 
 1861-65 
 
 269 
 
 38 
 
 307 
 
 91 
 
 1866-70 
 
 266 
 
 49 
 
 3IS 
 
 133 
 
 1871-75 •••• 
 
 241 
 
 S3 
 
 294 
 
 140 
 
 1876-80 
 
 215 
 
 71 
 
 286 
 
 195 
 
 1881-85 
 
 184 
 
 51 
 
 235 
 
 222 
 
 1886-90 
 
 172 
 
 46 
 
 218 
 
 259 
 
 1891-95 .... 
 
 158 
 
 57 
 
 215 
 
 266 
 
 Three years. 
 
 
 
 
 
 1896-98 
 
 150 
 
 60 
 
 210 
 
 315 
 
 The most conspicuous fact disclosed by these figures is the 
 small and constantly diminishing number of children now entering 
 the Society. In 1800, with a membership of about 19,800, nearly 
 500 children (486) became members annually ; in i8g8, with a 
 membership of 17,031, the number had fallen to 150, or 210 if 
 we add those admitted on the application of their parents. There 
 was presumably some addition in this way in the earlier period,, 
 as the births of 200 non-members were then entered annually 
 in the registers of the Society. If the figures are to be depended 
 upon, it appears as if the m«nber of children entering the Society 
 now was only about one-third of what it was in 1800. Are the 
 figures to be depended upon ? Some of them are startling. 
 
THE EDUCATIONAL POLICY OF FRIENDS. 
 
 357 
 
 We know the membership of London Yearly Meeting in 1861 
 ■was 13,844, and the reported births 288. A rule-of-three sum 
 ■would lead us to expect more than 330 births in 1898, or twice 
 the actual number returned. If the births amongst Friends 
 equalled those in the population at large, the annual number 
 would be about 500, or upwards of 700 if we include the attenders 
 of meetings, not in membership. It is clear that the birth-rate 
 amongst Friends is very much lower than in the general popula- 
 tion. 
 
 The marriages according to the Friends' ceremonial are now 
 almost as numerous as at the close of last century, when they 
 averaged 100 per annum. The average of the past ten years 
 has been 81, in the past three years 100. It may be well to give 
 the figures respecting marriages for the same periods as those 
 already given respecting births : — 
 
 
 Average No. 
 of marriages 
 by Friends' 
 ceremonial. 
 
 Both 
 
 One 
 
 Neither 
 
 Average No. 
 of Friends 
 
 Date. 
 
 parties 
 
 party 
 
 party in 
 
 married by 
 
 
 members. 
 
 a member. 
 
 membership. 
 
 other 
 ceremonials. 
 
 , 1861-65 
 
 57 
 
 48 
 
 8 
 
 I 
 
 
 
 1866-70 
 
 57 
 
 51 
 
 2? 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 1871-75 .... 
 
 S3 
 
 38 
 
 13 
 
 2 ? 
 
 
 
 1876-80 
 
 61 
 
 34 
 
 21 
 
 6 
 
 36 
 
 1881-85 
 
 59 
 
 33 
 
 21 
 
 5 
 
 48 
 
 1886-90 
 
 61 
 
 30 
 
 23 
 
 8 
 
 47 
 
 1891-95 .... 
 
 71 
 
 34 
 
 27 
 
 10 
 
 54 
 
 1896-98 
 
 100 
 
 42 
 
 40 
 
 18 
 
 57 
 
 It will be observed that the average number of marriages in 
 which both parties are members is now less than 40 ; and as children 
 are not registered as members except when both the father and 
 mother are Friends,* the number of such children is not likely to 
 exceed 40 per cent, of what it was a century ago. StUl, even this 
 ■would considerably exceed the actual number. We suspect, 
 therefore, that the number of births reported is not complete. 
 Some parents, on principle, do not place their children's names 
 on the Society's register. But probably a stronger influence 
 
 * See Christian Discipline, ii., 16. 
 
35^ JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 is the excellent national registration of births, which began in the 
 summer of 1837. Before that date there were strong social 
 and pecuniary inducements why Friends and those connected 
 with them should see to the registration of their children by the 
 Society. With the establishment of the national system these 
 inducements lessened, and they have further diminished as the 
 national system has familiarised itself to the usages of the 
 people. A centiuy ago the names of nearly 700 children were 
 placed on the Friends' registers annually, in round figures — 
 members 500, non-members 200. At the present time the whole 
 number registered, members exclusively, is about 150. What 
 then, is the significance of these facts ? 
 
 (a) That the membership of the Society, instead of being 
 chiefly recruited by the admission of children through birth, is 
 less and less dependent on accessions from this source. 
 
 (6) That the number of Friends' children not in membership 
 is now probably much larger than that of those in membership. 
 
 (c) That the connection of the Society with the children 
 of its members is less close than it formerly was. 
 
 (d) That the reason is obvious why at a former period Ack- 
 worth and Croydon Schools were filled with Friends' children, 
 whilst now the institutions are able to admit large numbers un- 
 connected with the Society. 
 
 (e) That the Society's register of births, reaching back to 
 the time of the Commonwealth, now receives a diminishing number 
 of entries. 
 
PART IV. 
 
 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL. 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 THE OUTLOOK FROM THE STATION HOTEL, YORK.* 
 
 "pAINTING a morning view from Westminster Bridge, 
 Wordsworth wrote : — 
 
 Earth has not anything to show more fair ; 
 
 Dull would he be of soul who could pass by 
 
 A sight so touching in its majesty : 
 
 This City now doth, like a garment, wear 
 
 The beauty of the morning ; silent, bare. 
 
 Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie 
 
 Open unto the fields, and to the sky ; 
 
 All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. 
 
 Never did sun more beautifully steep 
 
 In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill ; 
 
 Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep ! 
 
 The river glideth at his own sweet will ; 
 
 Dear God ! the very houses seem asleep ; 
 
 And all that mighty heart is lying still ! 
 
 If it be permissible to compare small things with great — if 
 " beauty of the evening " be substituted for " beauty of the 
 morning," and if we read " last " splendour instead of " first," 
 the foregoing lines are appropriate to the view from the terrace 
 in the York Station Hotel garden, on the evening of Whit Monday, 
 1880. It was one of those days that come, to our thinking, 
 all too seldom in England. Sunday's rest foUbwed by Monday's 
 holiday had stopped the wonted outpour of smoke from steam 
 
 • A lecture delivered at the York Institute of Popular Science and 
 Literature, 12th December, 1882. In a prefatory note the author des- 
 cribed this lecture as " popular," not the result of original research, but 
 containing information " gleaned from printed books and from conversa- 
 tions with different persons." — [Editor.] 
 
 361 
 
362 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 engine chimneys, whilst the little that issued from household 
 fires was blown away by the crisp east wind. Hence, as sunset 
 approached, there was an atmospheric transparency uncommon 
 in our climate, and every line of the Minster's architecture, 
 and every twig on the freshly-leafed trees stood out as with 
 stereoscopic distinctness, in the evening light. I was one of a 
 party who had been celebrating an anniversary at the Station 
 Hotel, and as we walked in the garden afterwards, the thought 
 suggested itself that within the compass of the landscape before 
 us were localities and buildings connected with many a page 
 in history and biography, some notice of which might at a future 
 time prove interesting to an audience of York citizens. In the 
 summer of 1881 the artist of The Graphic newspaper made the 
 fore-ground of this view the subject of a spirited sketch. 
 
 Let us, then, in the first place, take a general survey of the 
 outlook before us, and then return to speak of some of its details. 
 The Hotel faces almost due north. Close to it on the east 
 lies the Cholera Burial Ground, and beyond it the outlook is 
 bounded by the line of the City Walls, which presently dip towards 
 the north, descending to North Street postern, disclosing the 
 graceful curves of Lendal Bridge over-arching the Ouse. Across 
 the river the view is bounded by the eastern side of Museum Street, 
 the chimneys of the Club buildings and the roof of the Concert 
 Room being notable amongst a wilderness of brick, stone and 
 slate. In the background rise the Minster towers ; then, turning 
 westward, the whole foreground is occupied with the gardens and 
 buildings of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society, the view beyond 
 being narrowed by the roofs of the houses in St. Leonard's Place 
 and Bootham. Further to the west the eye ranges over a wider 
 space, and, beyond Marygate, the Scarborough Railway Bridge, 
 St. Peter's School and Clifton, the distant horizon is bounded by 
 the Hambleton Hills. On the right hand their southern escarp- 
 ment is seen stretching away towards Wass Bank, whUst, on the 
 left, west of Rolston Scar, they abruptly descend in height, and 
 slope away towards Whitstone Cliff in the extreme north-west. 
 Having now in briefest terms indicated the general bearings of 
 
OUTLOOK FROM STATION HOTEL, YORK. 363 
 
 the outlook, and enumerated its main features, I wUl ask you to 
 be so good as to retrace the path I have led you, from the Cholera 
 Burial Ground on our right, to Whitstone Cliff on our left, and to 
 accompany me whilst we descend from the Hambleton Hills, 
 expecting in due time, as we work from west to east, to arrive again 
 at the Cholera Cemetery. 
 
 The physiography of Yorkshire has been excellently described 
 by Professor Phillips. His book. The Rivers, Mountains, and 
 Sea Coast of Yorkshire, published in 1855, has not been super- 
 seded. North Yorkshire, by John Gilbert Baker, F.R.S., 
 enters more minutely into the botany and physical geography of 
 the North Riding. Both works may be consulted with advantage 
 in reference to the geology of the oolitic range of the Hambletons, 
 once evidently a sea-cliff, and now forming one boundary of the 
 Vale of York. This great vale rarely rises two hundred feet above 
 the sea level. The highest point of the Hambletons is Burton 
 Head, 1,485 feet ; Hambleton Head is 1,300 feet, whilst Whitstone 
 Cliff is 1,078 feet above the sea. We cannot stop to discuss their 
 geological peculiarities, nor to expatiate on the view from their 
 summits, concerning which Wordsworth wrote a sonnet, though 
 seemingly it was too dusk when he was there to allow of his seeing 
 much excepting the cloud-effects of sunset. This prospect 
 " whereof," says Wordsworth, " many thousands tell," recalls 
 an anecdote illustrating the shrewd humour of a Yorkshire shep- 
 herd, who here chanced to encounter a cockney tourist. This 
 gentleman opened the conversation with a remark on the extent 
 of the landscape. " Yes," said the shepherd, " we see all the way 
 to York, and on a clear day a deal farder." Counting on the 
 ignorance of his companion, the tourist replied, " In very fine 
 weather I suppose you can see America ? " Taking the measure 
 of the wag, the Yorkshireman made answer, " Tha' can see a 
 deal farder." " What, further than America ? No ! no ! " 
 " They can though." " Why, what can they see ? " " Why, mon, 
 fra' Hambleton they can see to't moon on a moonsheany neet ! " 
 Our stand-point by the Station Hotel is too nearly on a 
 dead level with the twenty miles of country between it and the 
 
364 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 foot of the Hambletons to allow of our distinguishing the inter- 
 vening localities, excepting those which are almost close at hand. 
 So still looking westward, say from the higher rooms of the Hotel, 
 the eye rests on that wide meadow familiar to us all as Clifton 
 Ings. Ings is an interesting word. It is marked obsolete in 
 dictionaries, and hardly enters into the vocabulary of south- 
 country Englishmen. Yet some scholars say it is the root of the 
 name of England, and that in fact South Britain is not the land 
 of the Angles, but the land of ings, that is, of meadows, which the 
 word signifies. Eng, I am informed by Mr. Buckle, who lately 
 delivered in this hall an interesting lecture on Dialects, is a pure 
 Danish word in common use for a meadow. As the word is Teu- 
 tonic, I presume Clifton Ings must have borne another name in 
 Roman times, for it is said they then served as the Campus Martius, 
 or Field of Mars, where the legionaries and colonists of Eburacum 
 threw the discus or quoit, hurled the javelin, wrestled, boxed, and 
 raced on foot or in chariots. So recently as in Queen Anne's 
 days, horse-races were run on Clifton Ings, being removed to 
 Knavesmire in the Georgian period. 
 
 Overlooking Clifton Ings, from the north, we observe 
 the Elizabethan buildings of the North Riding Pauper Lunatic 
 Asylum, opened in 1847, ^^^^ containing between 500 and 600 
 persons of unsound mind. It has been irreverently said that 
 the staple commodities of York are lunatics and lollypops. It 
 is pardonable for its citizens to remind their detractors that 
 lunatics all the world over have occasion to rejoice in that humane 
 treatment which was experimentally begun in York, and carried 
 on here for several years before its promoters learnt that Pinel 
 was dealing with the insane on very similar lines in the Bicetre, 
 at Paris, when the Retreat was founded in 1792. May I commend 
 to your attention a volume published by Daniel Hack Tuke, M.D., 
 entitled. Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British 
 Isles. It contains many truly astonishing narratives of the 
 ways in which the insane were formerly treated, as well as various 
 local details of the beginnings of that beneficent reform with which 
 the family name of the author is imperishably associated. 
 
OUTLOOK FROM STATION HOTEL, YORK. 365 
 
 We might, I believe, spend a profitable quarter-of-an-hour 
 in narrating the story of the North Riding Asylum, but time 
 forbids. 
 
 Nor will we linger long at Clifton, the town dwelling by 
 the cliff. This cliff was more conspicuous forty years ago than 
 it is now, when a brick wall hides much of it from view. The 
 inhabitant of a mountainous district may smile at our elevating 
 a river bank to the dignity of a cliff. That our ancestors should 
 have done so is creditable to their perceptions of the picturesque ; 
 and still the view at Clifton Scope, especially in time of frost, 
 flood, or snow, affords one of the most pleasing glimpses of river- 
 scenery in the neighbourhood of York. 
 
 If now we turn our eyes further eastward, leaving Clifton 
 to our left hand, we shall note a continuous line of houses joining 
 that village to the City. These houses are those on the west side 
 of the north road and of Bootham. The evening light lingers 
 caressingly on the roof of the Royal Grammar School of St. Peter, 
 and we are reminded that though the building now in view was 
 erected so lately as 1838, the School itself is in the fourth century 
 of its history, dating back to the last year of Queen Mary. A 
 little nearer to the City, we note the red brick chimneys of Ingram's 
 Hospital, which have glowed in the sunsets of two hundred and 
 forty years. Sir Arthur Ingram, of Temple Newsam, built this 
 Hospital in the year the Long Parliament assembled (1640). 
 And now we have reached the Scarborough railway and the 
 railway bridge over the Ouse, and the Esplanade. The evening 
 glow is reflected from the surface of the water, and the spring- 
 green leaves of the willows on the banks tremble in the fresh- 
 blowing wind. As the City of York expands, its inhabitants will 
 have occasion to value, even more highly than they now do, 
 open places and public walks like the Esplanade. It was a 
 fortunate circumstance that the funds of the Ouse Navigation 
 Committee in the years 1844 and 1847 allowed the expenditure 
 of the ;^2,o88 IS. 4d. required to provide this popular promenade. 
 
 The field between the Scarborough Railway and Marygate, 
 now full in view before us, is called in the ordnance maps 
 
366 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 Almery Garth. Speaking more exactly, the railway almost 
 evenly divides the land bearing this name, and we are reminded 
 that we are approaching the site of the great Abbey of St. Mary's. 
 Here were the Abbot's fish-ponds. In 1785, the traces of these 
 ponds were still apparent ; and a pond in the orchard north of 
 Mr. Walker's tannery is probably connected with these ancient 
 fish reservoirs. The quaint name Almery Garth remains a 
 memento that here were the fields, the enclosure, the garth, where 
 the Abbey pastured its cattle before slaughtering, especially 
 those — doubtless always welcome — bestowed upon it in 
 alms. This word alms comes to us by way of the Norman-French 
 aumone, or aumSnier, through the Latin eleemosyna, from the 
 Greek word for pity; Almery Garth, then, was the enclosure 
 wherein were kept the cattle given as alms to the monastery. 
 
 Let us take note of the house that bounds this part of Almery 
 Garth on the north-east, and stands on the south side of the little 
 street that leads out of Marygate to the field path to Clifton. 
 Drake says here was the first house of the Grey Coat Girls' School, 
 established in 1705, for twenty poor girls. Is the present house 
 the identical building, or a successor to the one standing here in 
 Queen Anne's reign ? On the opposite side of the street a glass 
 manufactory was established early in the eighteenth century, 
 but it did not long flourish, and the buildings were removed. 
 Let us return to the high house we have been speaking of. Here 
 died in 1772 a man whose writings the prince of English essayists 
 commends in the highest terms. By referring to the Essays of 
 Elia, we shall find Charles Lamb advising his readers to 
 " get the writings of John Woolman by heart." The memory 
 of that good man is more widely venerated in the United States 
 of America than in this country, and almost every summer brings 
 its pilgrims from the west of the Atlantic to visit the last resting 
 place of the philanthropist who had left his home at Mount Holly, 
 in New Jersey, and, overtaken by small-pox, whUst on a Gospel 
 and philanthropic mission to England, ended his days here by 
 Almery Garth. His bones rest in the disused Friends' Burial 
 Ground on Bishophill, under the shadow of the wall that divides 
 
OUTLOOK FROM STATION HOTEL, YORK. 367 
 
 that place of sepvilture from Dame Middleton's Hospital. One 
 reason why John Woolman's name is now better known in the 
 United States than in Great Britain was the publication of his 
 Journal in 1871, with a scholarly introduction by the poet Whittier. 
 In this introduction Whittier mentions how William Ellery 
 Channing had expressed his great surprise that the Journal 
 was so little known. Edward Irving pronounced the book a 
 godsend. Henry Crabb Robinson, the friend of Goethe, 
 Wordsworth and Coleridge, records his reading of John Woolman's 
 Journal in his diary with the comment, " A perfect gem ! He 
 is a schone seele, a beautiful soul. An illiterate tailor, he writes 
 in a style of the most exquisite purity and grace. His moral 
 qualities are transferred to his writings. . . . His religion 
 was love. His whole existence and all his passions were love." 
 References to these testimonies from eminent men are apposite to 
 the objects of this lecture, but in one sense they are inappropriate 
 to him to whom they refer, for he was the humblest of men, and, 
 as Whittier says, " sought no place in the world's estimation, 
 content to be only a passive instrument in the hands of his Master.'' ' 
 John Woolman's tenderness of conscience was so sensitive, 
 perhaps so morbidly sensitive, that he made his journeys 
 on foot, not feeling free to ride on stage coaches where the horses 
 were liable to be overdriven. Thus he ante-dated the efforts 
 of societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals. His life 
 work was to induce the denomination to which he belonged 
 to renounce all participation in the holding of negro slaves, and 
 so to give the initial impulse to a movement which, within the 
 lifetime of the present generation, has made millions of slaves 
 and serfs into free men. It is meet that the citizens of York, 
 who in after days bore their part in returning to Parliament 
 William Wilberforce and Henry Brougham, should regard the 
 memory of the good man who here ended his life of self-sacrifice, 
 a pioneer in the cause which those great orators afterwards did 
 so much to make popular and triumphant. 
 
 Some of the localities we have spoken of are visible from 
 the Station Hotel only in clear weather, and from its highest 
 
368 JOHN STEPHENSON EOWNTREE. 
 
 windows or garden terraces. Now we have arrived at that part 
 of the outlook which is nearest to the Hotel — the site of the 
 Abbey of St. Mary's and the Priory of St. Leonard's, bounded on 
 the south by the Ouse, on the westbyMarygate, on the north by 
 Bootham, and on the east by St. Leonard's Place and Museum 
 Street. It has been a truly felicitous circumstance that a group 
 of buildings, ruins, and institutions of the highest interest should 
 have been preserved on a site, itself consecrated by historic 
 associations. And their value is enhanced a thousandfold, 
 because, whilst rich in byegone memories, they are now largely 
 ministering to the ciilture, the piety, the health, and the recrea- 
 tion of the present generation. In the centre of the group stands 
 the Museum of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society. It was 
 erected in 1827, from the designs of W. Wilkin, R.A. The 
 Museum contains amongst its geological treasures the bones, the 
 discovery of which called it into existence. These were found 
 in Kirkdale Cave, near to Kirbymoorside, and specially 
 excited the interest of three York gentlemen, Mr. James Atkinson, 
 Mr. William Salmond, F.G.S., and Mr. Anthony Thorpe. 
 Believing that these fossils would be more valuable if cared for 
 in a public institution, the gentlemen just named agreed to con- 
 stitute them the nucleus of a Yorkshire Museum of Natural 
 History and Antiquities. The late Archdeacon Hey has 
 succinctly told us the history of the origin of the Museum, and 
 his valuable paper having been printed, it is unnecessary to pursue 
 the subject in detail. To William Vernon Harcourt, more than to 
 any other man, is the City of York indebted for its Museum, 
 and for all which has grown up in connection with it. Principally 
 through his influence, perseverance, and judgment, a grant of 
 the land on which, then in wild desolation, were standing the 
 ruins of St. Mary's Abbey, was obtained from the Crown, and 
 sanctioned by Act of Parliament. Nine thousand pounds was 
 subscribed for the erection of a museum on this site, so admirably 
 adapted for its purpose. William Vernon Harcourt was the 
 first President of the Philosophical Society, and was untiring 
 in advancing its interests. It was only in February of 1830 that 
 
OUTLOOK FROM STATION HOTEL, YORK. 369 
 
 the Museum was opened, and in the summer of the next year, 
 the first meeting of the British Association for the advancement 
 of science was held within its walls. Each succeeding year has 
 added to the treasures of the Philosophical Society, and made 
 its Museum and grounds increasingly worthy of being a centre 
 for the safe custody of so much that is valuable, not only to 
 the archaeologist and man of science, but to any intelligent person 
 who can appreciate the discoveries of science and the local monu- 
 ments of antiquity. 
 
 Of pre-eminent value amongst these local monuments 
 is the Multangular Tower on the east of the Museum, the lower 
 part of which is a Roman building, erected in all probabiUty in 
 the third century. There is something that kindles thought 
 in the remembrance that these walls, white in the evening sunlight 
 of Whitsuntide, were reared by Latin builders, before Constan- 
 tine had here been hailed as Imperator ; before he had founded 
 the great City on the Bosphorus, that bears his name ; even before 
 the festival of Whitsuntide was officially observed on the banks 
 of the Tiber. To the accumulations of rubbish which had entombed 
 them, the preservation of these memorials of Roman architecture 
 is due. Readers of Mr. WeUbeloved's Eburacum will remember 
 that he tells how, when the Philosophical Society removed some 
 of these accumulations, Roman legionary inscriptions, like the 
 scribbling in a modem barrack room, were found on the 
 lower courses of stones in the interior. Here the victorious 
 sixth legionaries had beguiled some of their idle hours. 
 It may not be irrelevant to remind the members of this 
 Institute how good must have been the masonry of the Roman 
 builders, which has enabled these walls to stand for so many 
 hundreds of years. The Romans did not scamp their work. 
 They used excellent mortar, made in small quantities at a 
 time, from freshly prepared lime. The Roman mortar is often 
 found to be harder and more lasting even than the bricks which 
 it binds together, and to be impervious to a penknife. 
 
 Running eastward from the Multangular Tower, the 
 Roman Wall presently touches the ruins of St. Leonard's 
 
 25 
 
370 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 Hospital. And now, for a moment, let us note the contiguity 
 of the two ecclesiastical buildings of St. Mary's and St. Leonard's ; 
 for though the Multangular Tower and the Museum now divide 
 the two groups of ruins, the buildings of the Abbey and the 
 Hospital must have been so near to each other that some 
 intercourse between the two institutions may have been not 
 infrequent, and the escapades of Brother Jucundus may at least 
 have been possible. If we may rely on what the Rev. S. Baring- 
 Gould says,* Brother Jucundus was a monk in the Priory 
 of St. Leonard's about the time when Christopher Columbus was 
 discovering the New World. On the recurrence of a York fair, 
 the temptation was irresistible to steal out, in the siesta hour after 
 dinner, and to see again the dancing dogs, the whirli-go-rounds, 
 the giantesses and dwarfs, the spice stalls and the drinking- 
 booths. When the brother's departure was perceived, the Prior 
 despatched two monks to see after him, who, alas ! had to wheel 
 back their friend on a barrow, in a state in which too many, 
 both before and since, have been found at fair times. Eccles- 
 iastical judgment, prompt and stem, consigned him to be walled 
 up alive in the Priory cellar. Soon after the builders of this living 
 grave may have sung their requiem, " Sinful brother, part in 
 peace," the seasonable fall of the wall behind Jucundus released 
 him from his uncomfortable position, and enabled him — now 
 sobered — to run up a passage leading into St. Mary's Abbey, 
 where he took his place, no questions being asked, amongst the 
 Benedictine monks. For a year he conducted himself decorously 
 in his new home, but the recurrence of the York fair again led 
 Jucundus into alcoholic excess, for which he suffered in St. Mary's 
 the same penalty he had undergone in St. Leonard's. In nearly 
 the same way he a second time escaped, falling this time out of 
 St. Mary's into St. Leonard's, and timing the event so opportunely 
 that his arrival there, a year and a day after his departure, 
 occurred at the very crisis when a new Prior was needed. It is 
 hardly needful to finish the story. Jucundus, restored to his 
 brethren as by a miracle, was hailed by them as Prior. He ruled 
 * In Yorkshire Oddities, 
 
OUTLOOK FROM STATION HOTEL, YORK. 37I 
 
 many years in that capacity, and it cannot be surprising that the 
 moral state of St. Leonard's Priory at his decease justified its 
 suppression. Its history had then extended over six centuries. 
 According to the ordinary accounts, the kingdom of England 
 had only emerged out of the Heptarchy about a century when 
 King Athelstan granted to certain rehgious persons connected 
 with the Cathedral Church of York, called Colidei or Culdees, a 
 piece of ground on which to erect a hospital. A reference to Mr. 
 Wellbeloved's excellent handbook to the antiquities in the 
 Museum and grounds will inform the reader how successive 
 kings, William the Conqueror, his sons Rufus and Beauclerc, 
 and others, enlarged the possessions of the Hospital, till in the 
 time of Henry VIII., his minister, Thomas Cromwell, found them 
 worth ;f5,ooo per annum reckoned in the currency of to-day. 
 The ruins now standing are the Ambulatory, probably built by 
 John Romanus, treasurer to the Minster, about the time when 
 the Commons representatives were first summoned to Parliament. 
 St. Leonard's Hospital gives its name to the neighbouring 
 street of Lendal, formerly called Ald-Conyngstrete. Museum 
 Street has had many names: Mr. Davies says it was formerly 
 called Ficteles Lane, which became Footless Lane by the reign 
 of James I., and afterwards Finkle Street and Back Lendal, of 
 course not becomiag Museum Street till a recent date. Lendal 
 Tower, standing by the river at the south-east extremity of the 
 Museum gardens, marks the site of the ancient landing-place or 
 wharf of St. Leonard's. For just two hundred years this tower 
 has been used for waterworks purposes. In 1682 a pumping- 
 engine, worked by two horses, was placed in it, by means of which 
 a scanty supply of water was furnished to the citizens every 
 week. The mains were at that time the trunks of trees hoUowed 
 out and fastened together. After the sale of the waterworks 
 property by Colonel Thornton, in 1799, the new proprietary 
 raised the height of the tower to 58J feet above the river, and 
 introduced an eighteen horse steam-engine. The new engine 
 house at Acomb Landing, and the reservoirs on Severus Mount, 
 were constructed in 1850. 
 
372 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 St. Mary's Abbey had not enjoyed quite so long a career as 
 St. Leonard's Hospital, when suppressed in 1540. Sixteen years 
 before the Norman Conquest, Siward, Earl of Northumberland, 
 a Dane, began to build a church or minster, and dedicated it to 
 St. Olave, a Norwegian king, reverenced as a saint by the 
 Northmen. D3dng in 1055, the Saxon Chronicle says Siward 
 was buried within " the Minster at Galmanho," then the name of 
 Marygate, which afterwards became Earlesburgh. In 1078, the 
 Conqueror gave this church and four acres of land to a company 
 of Benedictine monks, who had been driven from Whitby to 
 Lastingham, and now took up their abode in York. William 
 Rufus, in 1089, laid the foundation of a new church, and in 1270, 
 Abbot Simon de Warwick laid the foundation of the choir, and 
 lived to see the whole building completed within twenty-four 
 years. The principal part of the ruins now standing formed the 
 north wall of the nave of the church. The head of this monastery 
 was a mitred Abbot, had a seat in Parliament, and was called 
 Lord Abbot. The possessions of the Abbey were very large in 
 the sixteenth century ; its clear annual rental in 1540 is given as 
 £1,650, an enormous sum, having regard to the value of money 
 at that time. The relations of the Abbey with the City of York 
 seem often to have been strained. Lively disputes between 
 the Abbots and the Lord Mayors of former days had to be referred 
 to the King himself, and a wall was built all round the Abbey 
 land to protect it from the hostilities of the York citizens. The 
 picturesque towers at both ends of Marygate are the remains of 
 this fortification. It is an almost accidental thing that any 
 part of the great Abbey of St. Mary's has remained to the present 
 day. Had it not been for the formation of the Yorkshire Philo- 
 sophical Society, it is hardly likely the present generation would 
 have seen any of its ruins. After the Reformation, the materials 
 of the Abbey were used to build the residence of the President of 
 the Council of the North, now the WUberforce School for the 
 Blind. The building is hid from our view by the Museum, and 
 so is just outside the range of the present lecture. The Abbey 
 ruins were further diminished Dy the siege of 1644. In Queen 
 
OUTLOOK FROM STATION HOTEL, YORK. 373 
 
 Anne's reign, St. Olave's church was repaired and ahnost rebuilt 
 out of them. When George I. was king, the Corporation of 
 Beverley had leave to use the stone for three years in the 
 restoration of Beverley Minster, and, stUl later, a lime-kiln was 
 bmlt, and lime manufactured out of the ruins. Marks of bullets 
 may be observed on some of the stones of the wall dividing the 
 Museum gardens from St. Olave's church-yard. We believe 
 these indents sometimes do duty as memorials of the siege of 
 1644. We do not like to spoil an antiquarian story, but as a 
 matter of fact, these marks were the work of the Yeomanry who 
 exercised here before the enclosure of the Museum gardens, and 
 have been seen firing at these ruins by some of our older 
 citizens. 
 
 We have mentioned the origin of St. Olave's church. It is a 
 prominent object from our standpoint by the Royal Station 
 Hotel, and calls for a few words on its after history. When the 
 stately church of St. Mary had been built, St. Olave's became a 
 conventual church, reckoned as a chapel dependent upon the 
 Abbey. In the siege of 1644, a battery of guns was placed on 
 the roof, and the edifice was much injured. Of its restoration 
 in the eighteenth century we have already spoken. Formerly 
 there was an official seat in this church for the President of the 
 Council of the North, and in aU likeUhood the able author of the 
 policy of Thorough, Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, ofttimes 
 worshipped here. In the civil war which the policy of Thorough 
 helped to excite, the locahty we are looking on was the scene 
 of bloody strife. Before the war broke out, in 1642, Almery 
 Garth was crowded with the Royalist Artillery, and when York 
 was invested by the Parliamentary Army in 1644, the Earl of 
 Manchester's troops occupied the ground from Almery Garth to 
 Monk Bridge. The ground on which the Railway Station and 
 the Hotel now stand, down to the river, was known as Bishop 
 Fields, and was covered by the Scotch Army. On the morning 
 of Trinity Sunday a body of Parliamentary troops entered the 
 Abbey enclosure by St. Mary's Tower at the comer of Bootham 
 and Marygate, and took the Manor House. They were surrounded 
 
374 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 by the garrison, many were made prisoners, and others killed in 
 the Manor bowling green, part of which now constitutes the 
 north-eastern section of the Museum gardens. 
 
 It will be observed that the ecclesiastical buildings of St. 
 Olave's are connected with a square stone house nearer to the 
 river by a Norman arch of singular beauty, which was the 
 principal entrance to the Monastery. St. Mary's Lodge is now 
 the residence of the Curator of the Museum.* It is of later date 
 than the archway. The lower part is believed to have been the 
 Abbey prison, where its debtors and other prisoners were confined. 
 The Abbot had the power of life and death in his hands. His 
 gallows stood in Burton Lane, then entered from Bootham by a 
 gate, Galman-hithe, i.e., GaUows-gate. The Abbot's Court was 
 probably held in the room above the prison. The house before us 
 possesses also a pecuhar interest as having been the home of 
 John Phillips. Before he entered it in 1826, the building was in 
 a tumble-down condition, having been used as a public-house. 
 It was here that, as curator of the Museum, he did so much to 
 gather together its varied treasures and to prosecute the scientific 
 researches that made him famous. How often have I wondered, 
 as a child, what was the purpose of the remarkable erections in 
 different parts of his garden, which were, in fact, rain gauges at 
 different elevations. I have had frequent occasion, in writing 
 this lecture, to refer to The Rivers, Mountains, and Sea Coast of 
 Yorkshire, and I observe that in Professor Phillips' chapter on 
 climate, he gives the results of these observations. In one year, 
 a very dry one, 1834-33, the rainfall on the top of the Minster was 
 a fraction more than eight inches, whilst it was twelve on the 
 top of the Museum, and nearly sixteen on the ground. The 
 Yorkshire Philosophical Society was fortunate in having William 
 Vernon Harcourt for its first President, and it was equally so 
 in having John PhilUps for its first Curator. He was to a large 
 extent a self-taught man, which wiU make his memory not less 
 interesting to the members of the York Institute. He was for 
 
 * Since this was written, the lodge has been made into a private resi- 
 dence. — [Editor.] 
 
OUTLOOK FROM STATION HOTEL, YORK. 375 
 
 many years Assistant Secretary to the British Association, its 
 President in 1865, and Professor of Geology at Oxford when 
 he died in 1874. 
 
 The ■ Swimming Bath at the south-west angle of the 
 grounds of the Philosophical Society is not sufficiently conspicuous 
 to call for much comment. Its proximity to the Abbey reminds 
 us of the great change that has come over public opinion in respect 
 to the virtue of cleanliness. When St. Mary's Abbey was in its 
 glory, the popular idea of saintliness associated holy living with 
 a dirty skin. Thomas k Becket was England's great saint in the 
 twelfth century. His death made an impression on the popular 
 imagination difficult to exaggerate. When the Archbishop was 
 slain, his personal condition, as described by Dean Stanley in his 
 Historical Memorials of Canterbury, would have involved an 
 effective application of soap and hot water, before he could have 
 been admitted into an English workhouse. It is a suggestive 
 line of inquiry what it was that led religious opinion to take dirt 
 under its patronage, and how the change came about now 
 embodied in the orthodox maxim, " Cleanliness is next to 
 Godliness." 
 
 There remains only one other building before us that 
 demands notice. This is the Hospitium. Mr. Wellbeloved says 
 that no documentary evidence remains to tell the date of this 
 structure. It is a highly probable conjecture that here the monks 
 of St. Mary's Abbey entertained strangers, of the " casual " type, 
 whom it might not be desirable to admit to the principal apart- 
 ments of the monastery. The archway adjoining the building 
 probably formed the entrance to the Abbey from the river. 
 Whatever may have been the origin and purposes of the Hos- 
 pitium, it now affords a most fitting and hospitable resting-place 
 for the antiquities which have been stored within its walls. 
 
 The Museum gardens illustrate the resources of landscape 
 gardening. Those who remember them previous to their enlarge- 
 ment in 1843 wiU be of one mind in testifying to the added 
 beauty attained by the changes then made. The way in which 
 advantage has been taken of the slight undulation in the ground, 
 
376 JOHN STEPHENSON EOWNTREE. 
 
 and of the few large trees growing on the Manor Shore, denote a 
 skilful designer. The £10,000 left to the Philosophical Society 
 by Dr. Beckwith, which allowed of the enlargement and beautify- 
 ing of the grounds, must have greatly increased the sum of 
 human happiness, and is a suggestive instance of the benefit 
 men may confer on a community by gifts or bequests dedicated 
 to great public improvements. 
 
 There is one other association with the Museum groimds 
 that may be just alluded to, though it is, perhaps, rather by 
 inference than exact knowledge that this locality is connected 
 with the memory of Paulinus. King Edwin, whose name is 
 perpetuated in Scotland's capital, in our own " King's Square," 
 and in Coney Street, Con5mgstrete — the King's Street — embraced 
 Christianity in the Eastertide of 627. He was baptised in a 
 building on the site of the present Minster ; but the many 
 thousands of his people who followed his example are supposed 
 to have been instructed on the Manor Shore and baptised in the 
 River Ouse. Lady Hilda, afterwards the famous Abbess of 
 Whitby, niece to King Edwin, was another convert to the zeal 
 of Paulinus. Lovers of poetry may be reminded that Wordsworth 
 has portrayed this eminent missionary to our Saxon ancestors in 
 one of his Ecclesiastical sonnets — 
 
 " Mark him, of shoulders curved, and stature tall. 
 Black hair, and vivid eye, and meagre cheek, 
 His prominent feature like an eagle's beak ; 
 A Man whose aspect doth at once appal 
 And strike with reverence." 
 
 And now as we leave the grounds of the Philosophical 
 Society, the clock warns me that time will fail before we can 
 speak of all the points of interest in the outlook before us. North 
 of the Museum Gardens rises, above the ruins and the trees, the 
 roof of the Fine Art and Industrial Exhibition, a structure 
 evidently designed more for use than for beauty. The Blind 
 School is mostly hidden by the Museum. The summit of the 
 Theatre and the tower of the pro-cathedral of St. Wilfrid's need 
 not detain us. Then to the east are the Minster Towers. The 
 
OUTLOOK FROM STATION HOTEL, YORK. 377 
 
 Minster is far too large a subject to be brought into the present 
 lecture. We must leave it in the background of our prospect, 
 and then, turning still to the eastward, we find the view 
 bounded by the fine lines of Lendal Bridge. In former days a 
 Bridge-buUder, a Pontifex, a Pontiff, was so highly esteemed 
 that the word became the official title of a High Priest in the 
 Sacred College of Rome, at the head of which was the Pontifex 
 Maximus, the title which has descended to the Bishop of Rome, 
 the Pope, the Roman Pontiff. The Corporation of York meets 
 in the adjoining HaU, once dedicated to the guild of St. Chris- 
 topher. St. Christopher won his saintship by carrying pilgrims 
 across a river. This manner of transport has gone out of vogue, 
 but the Corporation of York may claim to perpetuate the 
 traditions of St. Christopher's memory, by helping so many 
 persons across the River Ouse, by the bridges it has built 
 during the last quarter of a century, at Lendal and at Skeldergate. 
 I have remarked how well it was that, by the building of the 
 Museum on its present site, the group of ruins and of buildings 
 around it have been preserved for the public service. Another 
 propitious circumstance is the harmony of Lendal Bridge with 
 its surroundings. Mr. Page's graceful design exactly suits the 
 site, and the ancient towers on either side of the river, between 
 which in former days a chain was stretched for purposes of defence, 
 might have been purposely built to give an air of antiquity to the 
 approaches. 
 
 Leaving Lendal Bridge, and now looking nearly due 
 east, the prospect is limited by the line of the Bar Walls rising 
 rapidly from North Street Postern. The Walls stand the ever 
 present mementoes of ages of turbulence and violence, and now 
 — ^useless for defence — they have become the ministers of health 
 and enjojTment to those who walk on them. In St. Olave's church- 
 yard, adjoining the Abbey ruins, rest the remains of William 
 Etty, R.A., who says, respecting the locality we have arrived 
 at, " What a lovely walk it used to be from Micklegate Bar along 
 the walls to North-street Postern ;— ancient fortifications, grey 
 battlements, verdant fields, and smiling gardens on either hand. 
 
378 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 finished in grand perspective by our noble Cathedral in one of its 
 finest points of view." It is supposed that the City Walls were 
 built on their present line in the reign of Henry III. They have 
 been often repaired, the last time when a great restoration was 
 effected being in 1833, principally at the instance of the Lady 
 Mayoress, Mrs. Barber. 
 
 Between the Hotel gardens and the Walls is the disused 
 Cholera Burial Ground. It is well that this plot of land — 
 one of God's acres, as our Saxon ancestors would have called it — 
 has been rescued from neglect and come under the care of the 
 Finance Committee of the York Corporation. Our elder citizens 
 remember the alarm, approaching to panic, that prevailed in 
 York in the summer of 1832. On June 3rd, the first case of 
 Asiatic Cholera occurred, rapidly followed by others. The ground 
 before us was appropriated for the burial of those who died 
 at their own houses. The remains of those who died at 
 the Cholera hospital rest in St. George's church-yard. The 
 coffins intended for the Thief -lane cemetery had to be brought by 
 boat to North Street Postern, because the people of North Street 
 rose in insurrection against the dead-cart, and prevented its 
 passage through the street. During the visitation of the cholera, 
 in 1832, 450 persons were attacked by the malady, and 185 died, 
 out of a population of 26,260. It has been estimated, I believe, 
 by the late Dr. Laycock, that if the mortality in 1832 had been 
 proportionate to that of 1604, when 3,512 persons are said to 
 have died of the plague, it would not have fallen much short of 
 8,000 persons. The pestilence of 1832 left behind it a quickened 
 sense of the necessity for sanitary reform. This burial ground, 
 now reposeful and beautiful in the verdure of the spring foliage, 
 may stand as a seasonable reminder of the need, wherever men are 
 congregated in towns and cities, that the public health should be a 
 matter of constant regard. If the laws of health are disregarded 
 through ignorance, laziness, or parsimony, whilst the penalty 
 usucdly falls firstly upon the poorer classes, it reaches eventually 
 to every other class of the community. In a very interesting 
 paper by the late Mr. Davies, read before the Philosophical 
 
OUTLOOK FROM STATION HOTEL, YORK. 379 
 
 Society, I remember his telling of the characteristic vigour with 
 which the Earl of Strafford fought against the plague when it 
 visited York in the reign of Charles I. It may have been good 
 for the citizens of that time that so vigorous a ruler had the 
 administration of the sanitary resources of the day. Yet more 
 happy will it be for the citizens now, if their health-officers have 
 the support of an intelligent Corporation, and, what is yet 
 more important, if they have behind them the power of an 
 educated opinion diffused through the whole mass of the people. 
 Several years ago the Duke of Argyle published a 
 charming little book on lona, in which he points out how our 
 conceptions of the lapse of time are affected by the index on 
 which we measure it. Speaking of the year 563 a.d., he asks 
 whether we think it a very ancient or a very modem date. " On 
 the banks of the Nile," says the Duke, " it would seem an hour 
 ago. Even on the banks of the Tiber it would not be old. On the 
 other hand, when we measure thirteen hundred years by the 
 changes they have brought, the days of Columba's ministry will 
 appear remote indeed. And this method of taking our stand at 
 different points of past time, and turning our face alternately in 
 opposite directions, is the only way of estimating correctly the 
 depths into which we look. For the tracts of time are fore- 
 shortened like the tracts of space." Let us apply this canon to 
 the landscape before us. We look on the ruins of St. Mary's, 
 and think how long it is since the monks went forth from that 
 stately home. But we glance at the adjacent Multangular Tower, 
 and the Reformation becomes a modem event, contrasted with 
 that far-off time when Rome withdrew her legions from Eburacum. 
 Three centuries and a half separate us from the former event, 
 fourteen centuries from the latter. But these periods fade into 
 absolute insignificance compared with those cycles of time during 
 which the forces of nature have been at work, fashioning the 
 country of which we have been speaking. In building the 
 adjoining goods warehouses of the North Eastern Railway, 
 several acres of land were lowered from ten to fifteen feet. The 
 spade of the navvy laid bare some interesting memorials of 
 
380 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 Imperial Rome, and showed that the very garden before the 
 Hotel was part of a Roman Cemetery that extended from the 
 Walls very nearly to the goods warehouses. But the excavators 
 also disclosed memorials of forces which had been operating here, 
 compared with which the utmost power of the Roman soldier 
 was as nought. The phenomena disclosed by these excavations 
 were observed and described recently by Mr. James E. Clark, B.Sc. 
 His lecture in this hall on a limestone boulder from the Goods 
 Station will have made the details of some of these geological 
 phenomena familiar to the members of this Institute. It may be 
 stated very briefly, for the information of any who did not hear 
 the lecture, that after the surface earth had been removed for 
 some feet, the excavator found himself in the strata known as 
 boulder clay, " the chief constituent of which is a dense tenacious 
 clay, varying much in colour, but nearly always dark — chiefly 
 black, dull red, and brown." At times, amongst this clay, are 
 found stones which have travelled very far from their homes ; 
 these travellers are caUed boulders, and give their name to the 
 strata. Some of these found here had come from Shap Fell, 
 whilst others evidently came from the oolitic hiUs in the north- 
 east of Yorkshire. Geologists assure us that they can decipher 
 with much confidence the handwriting of these ancient deposits. 
 Ice-scratches are clearly seen on many of the boulders. Ice is the 
 agent which has brought these travelling rocks so far from the 
 place of their birth. Some 80,000 years ago an ice-cap, seventy 
 feet thick, encrusted the whole surface of what is now England, 
 down at any rate to the valley of the Thames. In this glacial 
 period was deposited the boulder clay just referred to. But the 
 geologist does not stop here. The further indications of geologic 
 research point to a still earlier period when an almost perennial 
 spring prevailed, and when the valley of the Ouse may have been 
 the abode of the huge ichthyosaurus, plesiosaurus, and 
 deinotherium, whilst in the thickets on its banks ranged the 
 hyena, the leopard, and the British lion, the direct ancestor of 
 the noble brute which is wont to roar on a thousand platforms, 
 and to adorn innumerable cartoons in Punch. But our arithmetic 
 
OUTLOOK FROM STATION HOTEL, YORK. 381 
 
 almost fails to carry us through epochs so vast as those disclosed 
 by geology. . . . 
 
 I have to thank you for the attention with which you 
 have accompanied me as I have essayed to guide you in a hasty 
 survey of the outlook from the Station Hotel. May I be permitted 
 before we sepjirate to offer two or three considerations that have 
 been suggested by the localities we have visited ? 
 
 I was reminded, when mentioning the year 1827, in which 
 the Museum was built, that the same year witnessed the founda- 
 tion of this Institute. Those who have followed me as we 
 have passed from one locality or building to another, whether 
 they were familiar with its history or not, will unite in 
 acknowledging how greatly the enjoyment of life is enhanced by 
 the possession of the knowledge, even if for many of us it can- 
 not be profound, which will enable us to take an intelligent 
 interest in the objects which meet our gaze. This knowledge 
 was once the possession of the few. Now, by the agency of assoc- 
 iations like this before which I am permitted to speak, and by the 
 spread of elementary education, even though our advantages in 
 these respects are not so conspicuous in York as in some places, 
 there is hardly anyone who need remain ignorant of the history 
 of his home, or of the simple facts of natural science that come 
 before him in his everyday life. I have mentioned some of the 
 biographical associations of our survey. . . . The power 
 of individual character and the lasting nature of true work is the 
 thought that has arisen in my mind in connection with the names 
 in question. Of Paulinus, the Christian Missionary ; of John 
 Woolman, the Philanthropist ; of John Phillips, the man of 
 Science ; of William Etty, the Painter ; and of William Vernon 
 Harcourt, the statesmanlike founder of the Museum and other 
 Institutions, it might be said in the words of one of the earliest 
 extant English poems — 
 
 " Of those who shall afterwards name them 
 This is best laud from the living 
 In last words spoken about him ; 
 He worked ere he went his way." 
 
382 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 . . , As self-reliance is almost indispensable to success 
 for an individual, it is so to a community, and I hold that the 
 outlook from the Station Hotel is a great object-lesson to the 
 citizens of York, always before their eyes, telling them that wise 
 and public-spirited improvements bring their own reward, and 
 that some temporary sacrifice often earns for a community a 
 rich harvest in added health, happiness, culture, and material 
 wealth. 
 
 There remains but one other topic on which I should like 
 to speak. The making and maintenance of the Esplanade, the 
 erection of Lendal Bridge, and the thoughts suggested by the 
 Cholera Burial Ground — three features in the outlook we have 
 been considering — ^unite to remind us of the singular importance 
 of our municipal institutions. . . . When we were speaking 
 of the Multangular Tower, I drew your attention to the excellent 
 workmanship of the Roman builders who reared that tower as 
 an example worthy of emulation by the workmen of to-day. 
 But another question which that venerable tower suggests is — 
 why were the Romans unable to perpetuate their rule ? why did 
 their great empire fall to ruins ? Gibbon's Decline and Fall of 
 the Roman Empire will give a partial answer to this most inter- 
 esting question. A more recent writer, Mr. Thomas Hodgkin, B.A., 
 in his very able work, Italy and, her Invaders, has discussed the 
 same question, and thrown some fresh light upon its answer. I 
 should like particularly to commend to the historical readers of 
 your Institute the gth chapter, vol. ii., book 3, of this work. 
 In these pages they wUl read how " the civilisation of the Roman 
 Republic was essentially a municipal civilisation ; " how, during 
 two-and-a-half centuries of the Empire, " Local self-government 
 existed side by side with the Imperial system," not only existed 
 but flourished ; and they can also learn how this local self- 
 government was lolled by the Imperial policy in the third and 
 fourth centuries, and how intimately connected with the fall of 
 the Roman Empire was this destruction of the mnnicifia. Lord 
 Salisbury, speaking at Edinburgh a few days ago, perspicuously 
 explained how it is that whilst nearly every public man in Great 
 
OUTLOOK FROM STATION HOTEL, YORK. 383 
 
 Britain is theoretically favourable to local self-government, its 
 sphere is being constantly invaded by the spirit of centralisation. 
 On that occasion the speaker told the citizens of Edinburgh that 
 a special responsibility rested upon them to maintain their ancient 
 local government. I have reminded you that King Edwin, who 
 built Edinburgh, probably walked with Paulinus where the 
 Museum gardens now are, but where at that time were the 
 environs of Cair Ebrauc. We may conclude that on the ground 
 of antiquity our responsibility is not inferior to that of the 
 people of Edinburgh. 
 
 The particular aspect of municipal government, which comes 
 before us in connection with the Cholera Burial Ground, is its 
 relation to the public health. The destruction of life is usually 
 a much more striking event than its preservation. The pomp 
 and circumstance of war, the deed of the murderer, the fatal 
 calamities of fire or flood or shipwreck, are assiduously chronicled 
 and published, and so kept in remembrance, but men are con- 
 stantly liable to forget the unobtrusive services of the health 
 officer, and to kick at the regulations or the expense necessary 
 for the maintenance of national or local health. If the plague or 
 cholera were again in our midst all would be sanitarians, but in 
 the absence of the pestilence we are apt to forget our obligations 
 to sanitary science. Yet its triumphs may be presented in a way 
 that powerfully appeals to the imagination. . . In some places 
 it is stiU customary to lay a bunch of rue before the Judge in an 
 Assize Court, a memento of a time when jails were the abode of 
 deadly fever that sometimes struck down judges and jurymen 
 as well as the unhappy prisoners, and against which rue was 
 supposed to be an antidote. Sanitary science has now made 
 Her Majesty's prisons eminent for their healthiness. Their 
 inmates enjoy a lower mortality and a smaller amount of sickness 
 than the general population. The results attained in the City 
 of York are very encouraging to sustained labour in the same 
 direction. The ravages of the plague have now been unknown 
 for centuries, those of the cholera for a generation, those of 
 smaU-pox are greatly diminished. Centuries ago there were at 
 
384 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 least two hospitals in York for the care of lepers, a disease now 
 hardly known. Within the last thirty years the improved 
 drainage of the City, the raising of the Foss Islands, and other 
 improvements effected by the Corporation have reduced the 
 death rate by about two in every thousand of the population. 
 This means that at the end of each year 100 persons are living 
 who would have died but for these improvements, and 1,200 to 
 1,500 cases of serious illness have been avoided. But much 
 remains to be done, and without constant vigilance the ground 
 gained may be easDy lost. An influential association like the 
 York Institute might do much to educate a community as to their 
 municipal responsibilities, and to form and maintain an enlightened 
 public opinion. By its library, by its evening classes, by its 
 lectures, it can spread knowledge on sanitary matters amongst the 
 homes of the people, and especially amongst the young men 
 connected with the building trades. The Institute has lately 
 received from the Corporation of York a signal mark of appre- 
 ciative liberality. It will be a good return for the Institute to 
 do its part in educating our population to a higher appreciation 
 of the importance of their municipal affairs. The more opulent 
 and cultured classes should be wiUing to take their share in 
 municipal duties and to devote to the public service some of 
 their greater leisure. The men who do the real sanitary work 
 of the Corporation, in the supervision of building plans and the 
 administration of a vast variety of somewhat uninviting details, 
 should be weU sustained by the public opinion of those for whom 
 they work. Constituencies should feel that they are beholden 
 to their representatives rather than the representatives to the 
 constituencies . Those who have influence in the selection of repre- 
 sentatives to our local parliament should remember that the health 
 and even the lives of very many persons may largely depend upon 
 the intelligence, ability, and disinterested zeal of such represen- 
 tatives. And especially would I say that the best men of every 
 creed and party should strive to purify, and to keep pure, the 
 fountains of municipal life. The choosing of councillors might 
 be, and sometimes is made an occasion of great value in 
 
OUTLOOK FROM STATION HOTEL, YORK. 385 
 
 educating the public mind on municipal affairs, but too often 
 it is degraded by scenes of debauchery and corruption. In this 
 corruption a double evil is done : the poor learn to regard their 
 votes as a property to be sold instead of a trust to be faithfully 
 exercised, and some of the best men of every party are driven 
 far away, and their services lost to the public, because they 
 refuse to allow themselves to be dragged through dirt to dignity. 
 I wish I could fortify my plea on behalf of local patriotism by 
 recalling the words of Lord Derby, in a speech in the autumn 
 of 1879, when he pointed out that it could not be too much 
 encouraged, as it was the most needed and the least selfish form 
 of patriotism, and that whilst the number of persons who can 
 sensibly influence the policy of a nation is very small, the number 
 who may be able to benefit the smaller communities of our 
 towns and cities is large. 
 
 In conclusion, I trust I may have succeeded in showing that 
 the outlook from the Station Hotel is in many respects notable— 
 and that the considerations which are naturally suggested by it, 
 might indirectly help to make the outlook from all the dwellings 
 in York — whether cottages or mansions — ^brighter and happier 
 and more prosperous than it is. 
 
 26 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 « PRIEST BOWLES." * 
 
 'T'HE roofs of the houses and the sward in the'^Minster close 
 were white with snow at the Christmastide of 1651, when 
 a notable traveller paid his first visit to the City of York. The 
 Christmas-day of that year seems to have fallen on a Thursday. 
 The previous Sunday George Fox spent at Beverley, speaking in 
 two of the local churches, or "steeple-houses," as he calls them. 
 On the Monday he left the house of his friend Justice Hotham, 
 and started to walk towards York. The evening found him 
 hungry and needing shelter. Calling at a house by the roadside, 
 he asked the mistress for a drink of milk ; she said she had none. 
 He then asked her for cream, and as she was again saying she 
 had none, a child playing on the floor upset a can filled with milk. 
 The woman sorely flogged the child, whilst George Fox, rebuk- 
 ing her for her falsehood, took his leave. Notwithstanding the 
 frost and snow which covered the ground, he slept that night 
 under a haystack, and the next morning entered York, passing, 
 I presume, under Walmgate Bar. 
 
 He gives a detailed narration of what occurred on the next 
 Sunday : — 
 
 " Upon the First-day of the week following, I was commanded 
 of the Lord to go to the great minster, and speak to the priest Bowles 
 and his hearers in their great cathedral. Accordingly I went ; and 
 when the priest had done, I told them I had something from the Lord 
 God to speak to the priest and people. ' Then say on quickly,' 
 said a professor that was among them, for it was frost and snow, 
 and very cold weather. Then I told them this was the word of 
 
 * From the Friends' Quarterly Examiner for January, 1894. 
 386 
 
PRIEST BOWLES. 387 
 
 the Lord God unto them, that they lived in words ; but God Almighty- 
 looked for fruits amongst them. As soon as the words were out of 
 my mouth, they hurried me out, and threw me down the steps ; but 
 I got up again without hurt, and went to my lodgings. Several were 
 convinced there ; for the very groans that arose from the weight and 
 oppression that was upon the Spirit of God in me, would open people, 
 and strike them, and make them confess that the groans which broke 
 forth through me did reach them ; for my life was burthened with 
 their profession without possession, and words without fruit. After 
 I had done my present service in York, and several were convinced 
 there, received the truth of God, and were turned to His teaching, 
 I passed out of York, and looking towards Cleveland, I saw there was 
 a people that had tasted of the power of God."* 
 
 This narrative suggests two inquiries, (i) as to the propriety 
 or otherwise of George Fox speaking in the churches ; (2) as to 
 the religious character of his message. , Either of these might lead 
 us into a digression sufficient for an entire article. Fox and his 
 friends have often been censured for their disturbance of public 
 worship. It can hardly be maintained that this censure is in 
 every case undeserved. But the main weight of it falls to the 
 ground in view of the usages of the age as respects the national 
 places of worship. George Fox was sometimes apprehended and 
 imprisoned for his discourses in the churches, but it is observable 
 that on every occasion, so far as I remember, the offence alleged 
 against him was the doctrine he preached, not the disturbance 
 of the worship. There is ample evidence to show that in the 
 Puritan epoch it was a common thing for laymen to speak in the 
 churches, usually, though not always, after the minister had 
 finished. Sir John Cheke, when High Sheriff of Oxfordshire, 
 preached before Oxford University, dressed in his Sheriff's robes. 
 Sir Walter Scott, in the first chapter of WoocLstock, refers 
 to the practice of laymen speaking in the churches. In some 
 places the people rang the church bells to gather the congregation, 
 when they supposed George Fox was about to preach. He says, 
 " I went into many steeple-houses, but I did not go into their 
 pulpits." In more than a few instances the minister invited Fox 
 to speak ; this took place at Malton, Pickering, Aldingham, and 
 
 * Fox's Journal, i. 83, 84. 
 
388 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 Rampside near Ulverston. In 1654, Edward Burrough and Francis 
 Howgill visited a " steeple-house " in Lombard Street, London, and 
 were allowed to speak to the people for upwards of an hour. In 
 the following year Richard Hubberthome and James Pamell 
 were permitted to speak without complaint in several of the 
 churches in the eastern counties. At a somewhat later date 
 John Bunyan, himself a preacher among the Baptists, was allowed 
 to hold a long disputation with the Friends, in one of the Bedford 
 churches.* 
 
 A word or two on the character of George Fox's message in 
 York Minster. He told Bowles and the people that their rehgion 
 was one of profession rather than one of possession ; by which 
 he no doubt intended to say that their Christian faith stood too 
 much in externals, too little in inward and spiritual power. It is 
 a very interesting inquiry how far this indictment was true. At 
 no time, either before or since, was the ritual of the public worship 
 in the national cathedrals and churches more simple than at the 
 period of which we are speaking. It is pretty certain that the 
 Christmas season of 1651 received no special celebration in York. 
 Parliament had directed that if it were observed at all, it should 
 be by way of fast rather than by that of festival. Six years later 
 we find Edward Bowles writing to Secretary Thurloe, advising 
 the suppression of aU preachers who would persist in observing 
 the festival of Christmas. I presume that the Minster organ was 
 silent, and that the dress of the minister and the general arrange- 
 ments of public worship would correspond with the severe and 
 simple ritual now observed in the Presbyterian chmrches of 
 Scotland. How far, then, was all this a matter of externals ? 
 George Fox is said to have been " a great discemer of spirits, 
 as well as very much the master of his own." How far was his 
 discernment right on the occasion of which we are speaking? 
 We cannot answer decisively. 
 
 * Additional particulars on this subject will be found in Bowden's 
 History of Friends in America, Robert Barclays The Inner Life of the 
 Religious Societies of the Commonwealth, 274, ; in the appendix to J. S. 
 Rowntree's two lectures upon the Macaulay charges against George Fox ; 
 and in The First Publishers of Truth. — [Editor.] 
 
PRIEST BOWLES. 389 
 
 No portion of English Church history is more interesting than 
 that of the period comprising the reigns of Elizabeth, James the 
 First, Charles the First, and the Commonwealth. No student 
 of this period will deny that very many of the early Puritans 
 were animated by the sincerest piety. There is, however, much 
 reason to think that the fervour, simplicity, and beauty of this 
 piety had declined before the middle of the seventeenth century. 
 It is likely that the very success of the Puritans had tended to 
 foster the growth of sanctimoniousness, if not of hypocrisy. At 
 the time of Cromwell's accession to the Protectorate, Green says : 
 
 " Cromwell receilled how ' it was a shame to be a Christian within 
 these fifteen, sixteen, or seventeen years in this nation. It was a 
 shame, it was a reproach to a man ; and the badge of Puritan 
 was put upon it ! ' But the shame and reproach were now rolled 
 away. The Puritan was master in the land. All government was 
 in the hands of godly men. Piety was as needful for an of&cer in the 
 army, for a magistrate, for a petty constable, as for a minister of 
 religion. The aim of the Protector was that England should be 
 ruled and administered by 'the best,' by men ruUng and adminis- 
 tering in the fear of God. In Church as in State all that such men had 
 longed to do, could now be done. Superstitious usages were driven 
 from the churches. No minister wore a surplice. No child was 
 signed in baptism with a cross. The very pastimes of the world had 
 to conform themselves to the law of God. The theatres were closed. 
 Sunday sports were summarily abolished. There were no more races, 
 no more bull-baitings, no more cock-fighting, no more dances under 
 the Maypole. Christmas had to pass without its junketings, or 
 mummers, or mince-pies." * 
 
 There is just one feature of the question which deserves more 
 attention than it has received. The scenes of bloodshed and 
 violence, through which the army of the Parliament had advanced 
 from victory to victory, must have had a harmful influence on 
 the spiritual life of the men who were concerned in them. It had 
 been an initial error of the Puritans to take the Old rather than 
 the New Testament as the exposition of the Divine will ; and the 
 
 * Green's History of the English People, iii. 304. See also Marsden's 
 Early and Later Puritans; Neal's History of the Puritans; Stoughton's 
 History of Religion in England; and the abundant historical and bio- 
 graphical literature of the Commonwealth period. 
 
390 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 spirit of the victors of Marston, Naseby, and Dunbar, though in 
 a sense deeply religious, was yet far removed from the spirit 
 of Him who came to save men's lives, and who was Himself " meek 
 and lowly in heart." About thirty years ago the late Henry 
 Richard, M.P., then secretary of the " Peace Society," published 
 a pamphlet entitled The Effects of the Civil War in England 
 on the National Liberties, Morality, and Religion: a Bicentenary 
 Study. The last sentence of this pamphlet reads: — "England 
 was not a gainer by the Civil War in national purity, ' for whether 
 we look to public or private morality, we shall find that after the 
 war the very flood-gates of corruption were opened, and the 
 whole land was deluged with impiety and vice.' Not in religious 
 life and fervour ; for, almost from the beginning of the war, the 
 vital power of Puritanism began to decline, and continued steadily 
 to decline for more than a century, until things had come to such 
 a pass that Bishop Butler declared, in the preface to his Analogy, 
 ' It was taken for granted, by many persons, that Christianity 
 was not so much as a subject of enquiry ; but that it was, now at 
 length, discovered to be fictitious.' " 
 
 Returning now to the " Priest Bowles " of George Fox's 
 narrative, we know, from other sources, that Edward Bowles, 
 M.A., the intimate friend of Lord Thomas Fairfax, was living 
 in York in 1651. There can be no doubt that he was the man 
 whom George Fox met in the Minster.* 
 
 Edward Bowles was bom at the village of Sutton in 
 Bedfordshire, February, 1613. He was the son of Oliver Bowles, 
 B.D., the oldest member of the Westminster Assembly. Young 
 Bowles was educated at Cambridge University, being a graduate 
 of St. Catherine's Hall ; Dr. Sibbes and Dr. Brownrig are men- 
 tioned as two of his tutors. He and his family adhered to the 
 
 * The authorities to whom I am indebted for his biography are : — 
 Dictionary of National Biography, edited by Stephen and Lee, article on 
 E. Bowles, by the Rev. Alex. Gordon ; Markham's Life of the Great 
 Lord Fairfax : Davies' WaXhs through the City of York; Neal's History of 
 the Puritans: Edmund Calamy's Account of the Ejected Ministers, 1702; 
 'PaXmer's Nonconformist Memorial, 1802; Mitchell's Westminster Assembly ; 
 Kenrick's Memorial of Presbyterian Chapels in York, 1869; James's 
 History of Presbyterian Chapels and Churches, 1867; Bowles' own works. 
 
PRIEST BOWLES. 39I 
 
 Presbyterian order of Church government ; and we find him in 
 1645 a chaplain to the New Model Army, under the generalship 
 of Lord Fairfax. He was then the close friend of the General 
 and carried the news of the victory at Naseby to Westminster. 
 Parliament voted him £ioo in recognition of the good tidings he 
 had brought. The great influence exercised by the preachers 
 in the Roundhead army is a weU-known matter of history. 
 Amongst these preachers Edward Bowles was prominent. He 
 harangued the troops before the bloody storming of Bridgwater, 
 as well as on many other occasions. His biographers mention 
 that in the years immediately following the battle of Naseby, 
 whUst the Independents were growing in power, and the influence 
 of the Presbyterians was waning, Lord Fairfax rather inclined to 
 the Independents, whilst Lady Fairfax considered herself greatly 
 edified by Bowles' teaching, and her influence and that of her 
 chaplain was strongly exercised in favour of the Presbyterian 
 interest. 
 
 Lady Fairfax, before her marriage, was Ann Vere, the daughter 
 of Lord Vere, of Tilbury. She was the person who interrupted 
 the proceedings at the trial of Charles I., by her protests, as 
 mentioned by Clarendon in the History of the Great Rebellion. 
 Before the execution of Charles I., Edward Bowles settled in 
 York. His wife was the grand-daughter of Matthew Hutton, a 
 former archbishop of York. The intimate friend and colleague 
 of Bowles was Thomas Calvert, subsequently one of the 2,000 
 Nonconformist ministers ejected from the Church in 1662 — a 
 man of such learning that he was commonly known as " Rabbi 
 Calvert." His connection with Bowles is referred to in the follow- 
 ing passage, from the pen of the late Robert Davies, who was for 
 many years the Town Clerk of York, a singularly painstaking and 
 accurate antiquarian writer : — 
 
 " At the commencement of the Civil War Mr. Calvert was so 
 much esteemed as a preacher that the Corporation of York allowed 
 him a stipend of los. a quarter out of the city funds, and after the 
 surrender of York to the Parliamentarians in 1644, when the Presby- 
 terians or Puritan party had gained complete ascendancy in the City, 
 Mr. Calvert, with Mr. Edward Bowles (the well-known divine, who was 
 
392 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 chaplain to Thomas Lord Fairfax), and two other ministers, Mr. 
 Williams and Mr. Perrott, were appointed to be the four city preachers 
 with suitable stipends. The city preachers were at that time per- 
 mitted to usurp the functions of the cathedral and parochial clergy. 
 Two of them preached at the Minster every Sunday for a month, and 
 the other two at the church of All Hallows in the Pavement for the 
 other month, alternately. For some time their stipends were paid 
 out of the revenues of the Dean and Chapter, but in the year 1649 
 some doubt appears to have arisen whether the Parliament would 
 allow any grant for that purpose out of the capitular funds, and 
 the Corporation resolved to raise a sufficient sum by assessment 
 upon the citizens. After the Restoration, when ecclesiastical affairs 
 had returned into their former channel, the four city preachers lost 
 their occupation ; their services being no longer acceptable, their 
 stipends were not forthcoming ; and in January, 1661, the corporate 
 body, which had not yet been thoroughly purged of the puritanical 
 leaven, resolved that as Mr. Calvert, Mr. Bowles, Mr. WiUiams, and 
 Mr. Perrott had preached constantly in this city for some time past, 
 a subscription should be raised. In these days, I presume it would 
 have been called a testimonial."* 
 
 The preceding passage explains how it was that Edward Bowles 
 shotdd be found in York Minster in 1651. He was a tall, handsome 
 man, and his portrait, which still hangs in the Lodge at Middleton 
 Tyas.t shows him to have been a man of large stature, attired 
 as a Presbyterian minister, with a face indicative of power, probably 
 stubbornness, and good sense, rather than of spirituality. In 
 this respect he would contrast with George Fox, who was also 
 of large stature. When they met, in 165 1, Bowles would be 
 thirty-eight years of age, Fox twenty-seven. Bowles wore his 
 hair cropped short, in the Roundhead fashion ; Fox wore his 
 long, more after the custom affected by the Cavaliers. Fox's 
 countenance betokened a man of strong convictions and deep 
 spirituality, as of one wont to commune with the Unseen. It 
 may well be supposed that there would be but little in common 
 between the two men ; whilst in reality there were points worthy 
 of admiration in both. As we proceed, it will be seen that they 
 
 * Davies' Walks through the City of York, 229. 
 
 t A photograph of this portrait, taken by permission of its owner, 
 Leonard L. Hartley, Esq., was published in 1869, No. 90 in Hailstone's 
 Portraits of Yorkshire Worthies, vol. i. 
 
PRIEST BOWLES. 393 
 
 at any rate had this in common — they were both prepared to 
 suffer for their convictions. There can be no doubt that Edward 
 Bowles was a man of distinct power. Matthew Pool, the com- 
 mentator, thought more of his judgment than of any other 
 man's. Contemporaries considered that without being a 
 forward man, Bowles "ruled all York."* One of his biographers 
 says, " He was the spring which moved all the wheels in York." 
 
 In 1648, we find Bowles preaching in St. Paul's Cathedral, 
 before the Lord Mayor of London, t 
 
 I have not discovered any evidence that Bowles again crossed 
 the path of George Fox or his friends. In 1655 he published a 
 sermon, on the duty and danger of Swearing, J suggesting 
 
 * Dictionary of National Biography. 
 
 t I have lately had the opportunity of referring to this sermon, a copy 
 of which is preserved in the library of the British Museum. The sermon 
 occupies twenty-eight and a half pages and contains nearly 10,000 words. 
 It would be about twice the length of most of C. H. Spurgeon's printed 
 sermons. It is entitled Good Counsell for Evil Times, a plain sermon 
 at Paul's, 16th April, 1648, by Edward Bowles, M.A., of Katherin Hall, 
 Cambridge. Motto, Psalm xxxiv. 12, 13, 14. London : F. Neile, for 
 Samuel Gellibrand ; and are to be sold at his shop at the Brazen Serpent in 
 Paul's Churchyard, 1648. Eph. v. 15-16. Preface is dated York, 15 
 May, 1648. " To preach grace without duty tends to libertinism ; to press 
 duty without discovering the mystery of the Gospel, which is justification 
 and salvation, the righteousness of another, scil. Jesus Christ our suretie 
 in the covenant of grace, leads to formalitie, and the righteousness of the 
 Scribes and Pharisees, which is short of the Iringdom of heaven. We must 
 declare the whole counsel of God, which is to live in Christ by faith, and to 
 Christ by obedience." Page 2 discusses evil days under four heads, and 
 then passes on to speak of the way to better evil times. Page 1 5 deprecates 
 a return to old ceremonies, but thinks they might have been abolished 
 more gradually. " I perceive many ready to fight for a Common Prayer 
 Book who never made any conscience of hearing it." Respecting religious 
 toleration Bowles says : — " As not the opening a back door to old super- 
 stition, so neither the setting wide a pair of broad gates to a new toleration 
 would contribute hereunto, if it should produce some present peace, yet 
 that peace would be both miserable and short." (p. 16). " I speak not 
 as if there might not or ought not to be a, mutual forbearance amongst 
 Christians who hold the head, and walk as becomes the Gospel, and disturb' 
 not the public peace and welfare of the Church, seconded with an endeavour 
 of restoring one another to unitie, in a spirit of meekness ; for that men 
 in all points agree is rather to be wished than hoped, it is reserved for the 
 happiness of heaven, and not allowed for the lot of this pilgrimage ; and 
 if differences were wisely distinguished we should have more peace, and 
 never the lesse truth among us." (p. 16). 
 
 J The dutie and danger of Swearing, opened in a sermon preached at 
 York, 3 Feb. 1655, t^ ^'^V "t swearing the Lord Mayor. By Edward 
 Bowles, M.A., Preacher of the Gospell there. Zech. v. 4. Printed and sold 
 in York, by Tho. Broad, 1655. To the Hon. Stephen Watson, Lord Mayor, 
 the Aldermen, &c., of York. The Introduction, dated 15th March, 1655, 
 
394 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 the thought that possibly we might find that he had again come 
 in contact with a people so much alive to the danger of swearing, 
 that they insisted upon the duty of not swearing at all. But there 
 is no indication of this in the sermon.§ 
 
 Bowles took a very active part in public affairs after the 
 death of Oliver Cromwell. The narrative of his intercourse with 
 General Monk is somewhat tedious, but it shows how much 
 Bowles did in concert with Thomas Lord Fairfax to promote the 
 restoration of Charles II. They crossed over to Holland 
 together and were amongst those who waited upon the king at 
 Breda, when he made his celebrated declaration on behalf of 
 liberty of conscience. Fairfax and Bowles swelled that triumphant 
 train of returning Royalists who entered London on the 29th 
 May, 1660, a festival stiU commemorated by the customs of 
 Royal Oak Day. Both men shared to the full the intense 
 disappointment of the Presbyterians, who had done so much 
 to place Charles on the throne of England, when he broke the 
 promises made at the Hague, and when the intoxicated Cavaliers 
 began to wreak their vengeance on the living, and to offer un- 
 worthy indignities to the bones of the mighty dead. 
 
 names " a weekly lecture which I apprehend to be very much neglected." 
 " It will tend much to unity that you be very careful what ministers are 
 planted among you, such as give some evidence of the Spirit of God dwelling 
 in them, whose fruits are love and peace." The sermon is based on Matt v. 
 33-34. Page 4. " ' Swear not at all.' These words seem to be a direct 
 prohibition of all oathes, and hence the Anabaptists have concluded the 
 unlawfulness of swearing in any case ; and it hath deceived some of the 
 ancients, e.g., Hierome." " Universal terms in Scripture are sometimes 
 to be taken with restriction : Rom. vii. 18 ; i Cor. ix. 22." Page 6, Prop. i. 
 " It is not utterly unlawful to swear." " It is utterly abominable to forswear." 
 Page 10. " It is true, if men were as they ought, yea and nay might suffice 
 instead of oathes . . . but we must take men as they are, with their 
 defects of faith, truth, and knowledge, and the remedy of these defects, 
 which is an oath, must continue." Page 21. "Give me leave to be 
 particular and plain. You, my Lord Mayor and Sherifis, are under the 
 band of an oath that you will diligently execute the office you are called 
 unto according to your skill, power, and understanding. Hereby you are 
 tacitly obliged to do your utmost to imderstand the duty of your places, 
 and expressly bound to execute them to the utmost of your skill and power, 
 which is a great word and hard to be performed." The treatise occupies 
 twenty-two closely-printed smaU pages, and contains about 8,200 words. 
 The Quakers are not mentioned in the sermon. One passage incidentally 
 shows that those Bowles called Anabaptists styled themselves Baptists. 
 
 I George Fox, however, devotes four and a half pages of his Great 
 Mistery, 1659, to this sermon by Edward Bowles. — [Editor.] 
 
PRIEST BOWLES. 395 
 
 Markham, in his life of Lord Fairfax, says : — 
 
 " Mr. Bowles, Lord Fairfax's chaplain and chief adviser, was 
 equally indignant at the base conduct of Monk, and at the execu- 
 tions, acts of sacrilege, and treacherous persecutions, which were 
 the results of the Restoration. Before returning to York, he went 
 to (Monk) and said, ' You have given up your opportunities to do 
 your country service, for a feather in your cap and a little trifling 
 honour. But the Lord says of you as he did of Coniah, " Write this 
 man childless, a man that shall not prosper in his days ; for no man 
 of his seed shall prosper." Your title will be mentioned as a reproach 
 to yourself, and after your son has had it a little while, it will go out 
 in a snufi. As for me, I have buried the good old cause, and am now 
 going to bury myself.' At Doncaster, on his way north, he was met 
 by several clergymen, to whom he bewailed the hand he had had in 
 the Restoration." * 
 
 Great efforts were used by the court party to secure the 
 adhesion of Bowles to the Episcopal church, but they were unavail- 
 ing. He was offered the deanery of York, but declined it. He 
 also received a pressing invitation from the inhabitants of Leeds 
 to become their vicar, but this was prevented by the action of 
 the Court. Bowles would seem to have been broken-hearted at 
 the overthrow of the hopes he had formed from the accession 
 of Charles II., and he died in 1662, in the prime of life. Had 
 he lived a week longer there can be no doubt that he would have 
 joined the 2,000 Nonconforming ministers who left the Church 
 of England on the anniversary of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. 
 Death, however, overtook him a few days before that memorable 
 event, and he was buried on the eve of the 23rd of August, 1662. 
 
 In simaming up his character, Neal, the historian of the 
 
 Puritans, says : — 
 
 " He was a wise and a prudent man, having a clear head and a 
 warm heart ; an excellent scholar, and an useful preacher. He 
 attended Lord Fairfax when General Monk passed through Yorkshire, 
 and presented an address to the general for a free parliament. He 
 was very zealous and active in promoting the King's restoration, and 
 waited on his majesty with Lord Fairfax at Breda. It is credibly 
 reported that the deanery of York was offered him, but not being 
 satisfied with conformity, he was excluded the Minster, though he 
 
 * Markham's Life of the Great Lord Fairfax, 388. 
 
396 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 continued preaching at Allhallows, and afterwards at St. Martin's, 
 as he had opportunity."*! 
 
 Baxter and Palmer relate the following story : — 
 
 " One Mr. H conformed, and Mr. Bowles soon afterwards 
 
 meeting him, said : — ' Well, brother H , how like you the Common 
 
 Prayer ? ' ' Truly,' said Mr. H , ' it's but dry stuff.' ' I always 
 
 thought so,' said Mr. Bowles, ' and suppose that may be the reason 
 why our vicars choral run to the alehouse as soon as they have done 
 reading it.' " 
 
 Edward Bowles does not seem to have been a great author. 
 We have already referred to two of his works ; he also published 
 one or two political tracts, which it wlU not be necessary to do 
 more than enumerate. They constitute a part of the material 
 from which our historians have constructed their pictures of the 
 period of the Civil War. A pamphlet published in 1643, entitled 
 The Mysterie of Iniquitie yet working, and another in 1646, 
 called Manifest Truths, relating to the transactions of the Scotch 
 army and Parliament, reflect the views of the Presbyterian party 
 at the dates when these treatises were respectively published. 
 But by far the most famous of Bowles' works has been his Plam 
 and Short Catechism. This celebrity was not, however, secured 
 till one hundred and seventy years after the death of the author. 
 
 To trace the chain of events which led up to this celebrity, 
 we must turn back to the year 1651, at which time, it may 
 be remembered. Lord and Lady Fairfax were living in retirement, 
 
 * History of the Puritans, iv., 391, 392. 
 
 f " Of this pious and excellent man," says Canon Raine, " even his 
 opponents must speak with respect. He was the leader of the Noncon- 
 formists in the North, and the friend and patron of all good men. He 
 died suddenly, a few years after the Restoration. During the Common- 
 wealth he preached at the Minster, and at All Saints in the Pavement. 
 There is a good deal about him in all the Puritan writers, and there are some 
 interesting notices of him in the Fairfax correspondence, for he was greatly 
 concerned in the stirring events of the times, having been chaplain to Sir 
 Thomas Fairfax. There are several elegies on his death. Two of them 
 are among the Rokeby Papers. One is by R. S. , probably Richard Stretton. 
 It is not worthy of being printed here, for it is little more than a metrical 
 sermon. The author calls him — 
 
 'The glory of the North parts, York's right eye, 
 His brethren's right hand, one who from on high 
 Was furnished with incomparable parts 
 For the instructing minds and warming hearts.' " 
 
PRIEST BOWLES. 397 
 
 spending most of their time at Nun Appleton near York. They 
 had one daughter, Mary Fairfax, then about twelve years of age, 
 a great favourite of her father, who was accustomed to call her 
 " Moll." To instruct her in the classics Lord Fairfax secured the 
 services of Andrew MarveU, son of the rector of Wanstead in 
 Holdemess. Andrew Marvell subsequently became the Member 
 of Parliament for HuU, holding that position for many years, 
 incorruptible in a time of general corruption, and one of the 
 last members of Parliament who is stated to have received a salary 
 from his constituency. We have not time to stop to speak of 
 Marvell's fame as a poet and a satirist. His name may recall 
 Whittier's introduction to a volume of poems, where he says : — 
 
 " O Freedom ! if to me belong 
 Nor mighty Milton's gift divine. 
 
 Nor Marvell's wit and graceful song. 
 
 Still with a love as deep and strong 
 As theirs, I lay, like them, my best gifts on thy shrine ! " 
 
 Andrew Marvell, the member for Hull, was the frequent 
 correspondent of Sir Henry Thompson, the Whig M.P. for York 
 in the last three Parliaments of Charles II. Sir Henry Thompson 
 founded the hospital for old men in Castlegate, on the opposite 
 side of the street to the gates of the Friends' Meeting-house. 
 He had for his colleague in the representation of the city another 
 Whig member. Sir John Hewley. Sir John Hewley, who died 
 1697, and his wife. Lady Sarah Hewley, the daughter of Robert 
 Woolrich, who survived till 1710, were persons of large property, 
 attached to the Presbyterian worship and form of Church 
 government. Lady Hewley left considerable property to be ap- 
 plied for charitable purposes. Some of her coal tickets are stiU 
 annually distributed in York, but a much larger portion of her 
 money was left for the support of almshouses, and for the main- 
 tenance of " Godly Preachers of Christ's Holy Gospel." The 
 qualifications for admission to Lady Hewley's Hospital are before 
 me. The old ladies who enjoy her bounty must be fifty-five 
 years of age, and are to be able to repeat by heart the Lord's 
 Prayer, the Creed, and Ten Commandments, and Mr. Edward 
 
398 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 Bowles' Catechism. The chain of associations we have traced 
 explains why Lady Hewley should have esteemed so highly this 
 catechism of Bowles. As the eighteenth century passed 
 away, the Catechism came to be out of print and was forgotten. 
 The Presbyterian congregation in York, in common with so many 
 others throughout the country, lapsed into Unitarianism, and 
 at the beginning of the present century a large part of the income 
 arising from Lady Hewley's bequest was appropriated for the 
 furtherance of Unitarian objects. This state of things led to one 
 of the most celebrated litigations of the present century. Legal 
 proceedings were commenced in 1830, with the view of getting 
 this property out of the custody of the Unitarian trustees, on the 
 ground that it was being applied for purposes different from those 
 desired by the testator. Twelve years were consumed in the 
 litigation that followed, and it was not till 1842 that a final de- 
 cision was given by the House of Lords against the Unitarian 
 trustees. The result was that Lady Hewley's property, including 
 the interesting almshouses (now located in Saviourgate, York), 
 were vested in the trustees of the three denominations, — the 
 Presbyterians, Independents and Baptists. The special point of 
 connection between these proceedings and the subject of this 
 paper is, that during the litigation just referred to, the precise 
 meaning and doctrinal significance of Bowles' Catechism were 
 discussed by the legal advocates, with the same acumen and 
 elaboration of detail which characterise ecclesiastical lawyers 
 when they are dealing with doctrinal statements, whether in 
 the decrees of ancient Councils, or in the articles and rubrics of 
 the Church of England, 
 
 The litigation respecting Lady Hewley's property led to a 
 very important alteration in the law of England, which was 
 embodied in the Dissenters' Chapels Act, 1844, carried through 
 Parliament by the government of Sir Robert Peel. An interesting 
 record of these events wiU be found in Martineau's History 
 of England during the Thirty Years' Peace, iii., 402. The 
 government measure was strongly opposed by the majority ot 
 the Nonconformist bodies, but we believe the principle it 
 
PRIEST BOWLES. 399 
 
 embodies is now held to have been just. The principle of the 
 bill, as defined by Martineau, is that " Places of worship which 
 were not by the terms of the trust destined unmistakably for 
 a particular sect were to remain the property of the body which 
 had held them for twenty preceding years." 
 
 With the close of the Hewley litigation, and the alteration 
 of the law just described, the Catechism of Edward Bowles sank 
 again into the obscurity from which it had so unexpectedly 
 emerged. How far the almsbodies in Lady Hewley's hospitals 
 now occupy their time in meditating upon this document is not 
 for me to say. The present writer has long been aware that 
 proficiency in its contents was connected with admission to these 
 comfortable dwellings. It is also many years since he first read 
 the narrative of George Fox's visit to York at the Christmas of 
 1651 ; but only recently was it suggested to him that the 
 minister in the cathedral on that occasion and the writer of 
 the catechism were the same. 
 
 It has been an interesting task to trace out some of the 
 particulars of his biography, to read his well-nigh forgotten 
 writings, and to consider some of the historical incidents of his 
 career. It is a singular fact that Bowles' memory will owe its 
 preservation to an entry in the Journal of the man hustled down 
 the Minster steps at the Christmas of 1651, and to his own short 
 and simple Catechism, which, after a century of oblivion, was 
 made famous by the ecclesiastical Htigation of the Victorian age. 
 
 It is evident that Edward Bowles was one of the foremost 
 citizens diirkig the period of the Commonwealth. His life-history 
 not only figures in the local records, but he bore a part in the 
 national story. The man who carried to Westminster the news 
 of the fight at Naseby, who was so active in promoting the res- 
 toration of Charles II., and who died of a broken heart when he 
 saw the disappointment of his hopes, is one worthy to be re- 
 membered. He was not a prophet, like George Fox, with a 
 message to the world and to the Church, but on a lower plane of 
 action he served his generation according to his knowledge and 
 his opportunities. 
 
400 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 In the closing chapters of the Book of Ecclesiasticus 
 the Son of Sirach asks his readers to do honour to famous men. 
 He speaks of " Such as did bear rule in their kingdoms, men 
 renowned for their power, giving counsel by their understanding, 
 and declaring prophecies ; leaders of the people by their counsels, 
 and by their knowledge of learning meet for the people, wise and 
 eloquent in their instructions." Of some of these he says, " Their 
 bodies are buried in peace, but their name liveth for evermore " ; 
 and of others who have left no memorial, that " nevertheless they 
 were honoured in their generation and were the glory of their 
 times." Of the latter class was Edward Bowles. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 SAMUEL TUKE.* 
 
 "T X 7HILST the Minster bells were ringing joyous chimes in the 
 May-time of 1660, for the Restoration of Charles II., the 
 York Kidcote, a prison upon Ouse Bridge, was tenanted by a 
 sufferer for conscience' sake — a William Tuke who had taken up 
 his civic freedom in 1629, and belonged to the local congregation 
 of Friends. His son and namesake died in the reign of Queen 
 Anne, being succeeded by a Samuel Tuke, whose son William was 
 the grandfather of the subject of this paper. William Tuke was 
 a notable man. Born in 1732, he fulfilled the prediction of a phy- 
 sician, " That pulse wUl beat to ninety," by not dying until 
 1822. His first wife was Elizabeth Hoyland, of Sheffield, 1754-60. 
 He afterwards married Esther Maud, of Bingley, who bears the 
 responsibility of having been a prime mover in the establishment 
 of the Women's Yearly Meeting. Her stepson, Henry Tuke, 
 born 1735, married, in 1781, Mary Maria Scott, daughter of FaviUe 
 Scott, of Norwich. Henry Tuke died before his father. He was 
 a minister of the Gospel, and an author of some note. His works 
 were edited in four volumes, and a life of the author prefixed to 
 them, by Lindley Murray, the grammarian. 
 
 Samuel, the second child of Henry and Mary Maria Tuke, 
 was bom on the last day of July, 1784. When very young 
 he went, as a day-scholar, to the girls' school established 
 in 1785 by his grandparents in Trinity Lane, York. 
 
 William Tuke had been a colleague of Dr. Fothergill in the 
 
 founding of Ackworth School, and to his daughter, Sarah Grubb, 
 
 * From the Friends' Quarterly Examiner, 1895. 
 
 401 
 
 27 
 
402 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 we are indebted for the earliest account of that institution. These 
 associations may have predisposed Henry and Mary Maria Tuke 
 to send their little boy to Ackworth in 1792, when he was but 
 eight years old. His name stands No. 1429 on the long roll 
 of Ackworth scholars. After a stay of two years he was trans- 
 ferred to George Blaxland's school, at Hitchin, where his aunt, 
 Elizabeth Wheeler, was then residing. At the age of thirteen 
 his school-days ended, and he entered his father's wholesale tea 
 and coffee business. Many years after this, when Samuel Tuke 
 had become a member of the Ackworth School Committee, he 
 expressed the sentiment that the children were more affected 
 by Gospel ministry at the time he was a scholar than in after 
 years. He thought his own heart very hard because he did not 
 weep as so many of the boys around him did. Samuel Tuke 
 has left a very informing memorandum respecting the surround- 
 ings of his early life, from which, as well as from other 
 indications, it may safely be inferred that home influences were 
 more powerful in moulding his character than were his schools. 
 He says : — 
 
 " Though not born in the midst of wealth, every real want of life 
 was provided for me, and I luxuriated in all the riches of maternal 
 love, and in the warm affections of the kindest of fathers. Both he 
 and my mother feared God, and served Him in their daily walk. 
 It was my happiness in very early life to have a father who taught me 
 the truth, and made it appear lovely by his constant example ; who, 
 though delighted to see me pleased and happy, exercised a steady, 
 gentle rule and his word was not to be gainsaid. But what shall 
 I say of my mother ? Never were parents and child more bound 
 together than we were. Her lessons distilled into my heart like the 
 dew, albeit I was not without strange opposing propensities and 
 doubts. The Divine omniscience puzzled me much ; but my dear 
 mother had no difSiculty in giving me a reasonable answer to my 
 childish objections. She had indeed an extraordinary power of 
 teaching by analogies, and of opening the hearts of her children to her 
 instructions ; but her chief dependence for the rebutting of my 
 sUly quibbles with respect to the attributes of God, was an appeal 
 to my own conscientious convictions, my inward sense of the power and 
 goodness of Him whom I had been taught to call ' my Father in 
 Heaven.' She saw how much many of the matters which occupied 
 
SAMUEL TUKE. 4O3 
 
 my thoughts were connected with an inward desire to quiet my 
 conscience ; and it was her great aim to lead me to recognise that as 
 a Divine monitor, which, when very young, convinced me of my 
 naughty ways and thoughts, and made me feel sorry for them, when 
 no human being knew of them. And I came to beheve that God was 
 round my path, and that He did know all my secret ways and 
 thoughts ; and this belief did more thoroughly solve all my doubts 
 respecting the Divine Being than any arguments or reasons that I 
 ever heard." 
 
 Politically, Samuel Tuke was nurtured in a Tory home. 
 His relatives were warm admirers of the younger Pitt, and 
 shared the prevailing middle-class horror of the excesses of the 
 French Revolution. In 1796, Henry Tuke had published an 
 address to Friends, in which he had said that in his opinion it 
 was consistent with their principles, as well as most likely to 
 prevent their entering into the spirit of political parties, wholly 
 to decline voting for Members of Parliament. When the amiable 
 writer of these not very logical words, and his father, were in 
 London attending the Yearly Meeting of 1807, the great election 
 came on in which Wilberforce, Milton, and Lascelles contended 
 for the representation of the then undivided county of Yorkshire. 
 Samuel Tuke startled his friends by forthwith subscribing £50 
 on behalf of the firm in which he was junior partner, towards the 
 expenses of WUberforce's election. His father's address, just men- 
 tioned, must for the time have been consigned to a deep oblivion, 
 for the whole of the family circle threw themselves with ex- 
 traordinary energy into the contest. The result of the fourteen 
 days' poll, Wilberforce leading by a substantial majority, rejoiced 
 their hearts, and those of a wide circle of Yorkshire Friends, who 
 shared their intense abhorrence of negro slavery. 
 
 William Wilberforce formed a warm friendship with his 
 young and ardent supporter. When attending a Bible Society 
 meeting at Chichester, in 1819, James Hack was introduced as 
 the father of Samuel Tuke's wife. "Ah," said Wilberforce, 
 " my old friend Mr. Tuke. He is a second William Penn. Indeed, 
 there are three in succession." Many years later, when WUber- 
 force was dead, and a monument had been erected to his 
 
404 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 memory, Samuel Tuke said that he shivered when he looked 
 at the statue of his old friend encircled by the rain and smoke of 
 Hull. 
 
 It was not in the sphere of politics that Samuel Tuke chiefly 
 served his generation. Whilst the order of his mind was con- 
 servative, his love of justice and the strength of his understanding 
 made him a friend of progress and a hater of abuses. He 
 persuaded the Friends of York to introduce gas into their Meeting- 
 house, by undertaking to bear the cost, if, when introduced, 
 the congregation should then wish to return to taUow candles. 
 As the Reform era of 1832 drew on, Samuel Tuke ranged himself 
 along with the popular party. A report has been preserved of a 
 speech in the ancient Guildhall, which, says the local paper, 
 " excited the most intense interest, and drew forth repeated 
 cheers." This speech was a very able defence of Lord John 
 Russell's measure ; a conservative line of thought running 
 through an eloquent exposition of sound Whig doctrines. 
 
 In the election of 1833, when the Reform cause had triumphed, 
 many citizens of York wished that Samuel Tuke should represent 
 the city in ParUament. The requisition presented to him, and 
 his answer declining the proffered honour, are characteristic 
 documents. A letter from Joseph John Gumey, who had been 
 solicited to stand for Norwich, and who discusses the question 
 from the standpoint of a minister in the Society of Friends, reached 
 Samuel Tuke at this time. There can be little doubt but that 
 both these men did vwsely in decUning Parliamentary duties. 
 Samuel Tuke's deUcate moral susceptibilities, with the absence 
 of natural buoyancy and hopefulness, would almost certainly 
 have made attendance at Westminster irksome and distasteful. 
 There was work for him to do for his fellows, which not one of the 
 six hundred Members of Parliament could have done as well as 
 he could, whilst there were many who were far better fitted for 
 the work of practical poUtics. On the occasion referred to, the 
 electors of York found in Thomas Dundas, afterwards Earl 
 of Zetland, a representative who possessed many of the qualifica- 
 tions which Samuel Tuke had taught them to look for in a Member 
 
SAMUEL TUKE, 405 
 
 of Parliament. On the declaration of the poll, Samuel Tuke 
 spoke with singular force and eloquence, and in a strain of san- 
 guine anticipation unusual for him. His hopes of a permanent 
 reform having been effected in the conduct of Parliamentary 
 elections, were, however, soon disappointed, and at the election 
 of 1835 the old system of bribery was so rampant that Samuel 
 Tuke refused to vote. Henceforward the bias of his mind was 
 in the direction of a diminishing reliance on political changes for 
 effecting moral and social progress. 
 
 The condition of Ireland occupied a great place in Samuel 
 Tuke's thoughts in the last ten or twelve years of his life. His 
 son, James Hack Tuke, had been the colleague of William E. 
 Forster in helping to feed the hungry people during the Irish 
 famine. 
 
 In 1847, fever was ^fe amongst the Irish population in York. 
 Samuel Tuke induced the poor law guardians to provide a hospital, 
 and lent one of his fields for its site — the tenant arguing, " The 
 coos wouldn't tak' t' fever." Samuel Tuke frequently visited 
 the patients. Amongst his latest letters were several addressed 
 to Jonathan Pirn, recommending for the sister island ameliora- 
 tive measures, many of which have been adopted since. 
 
 Samuel Tuke entered with vigour upon his business life, and 
 was successful in its conduct. The vocation he would have liked 
 to pursue was that of medicine. His father overruled this 
 desire, but Samuel Tuke read so much in medical literature that 
 when he published his Description of the Retreat, many readers 
 thought that the author had been a physician. As the Retreat 
 was founded in the same year that Samuel Tuke went to Ackworth 
 School, he may have heard the family discussions that led up to 
 that event, and thus been predisposed to that interest in the 
 welfare of the insane which distinguished him throughout the 
 whole course of his life. 
 
 The history of mental disease and its treatment is a sad, 
 though in some senses a fascinating chapter in human history. 
 Time would utterly fail even to enumerate the strange remedies 
 which were employed. They will be found well described in the 
 
406 JOHN STEPHENSON EOWNTREE. 
 
 early pages of a volume published by the late Daniel Hack 
 Tuke, M.D., entitled Chapters in the History of the Insane in the 
 British Isles. In this volume the relations of the Church 
 towards the insane in the Middle Ages are traced ; then the 
 establishment, at a later period, of Bethlehem Hospital, and the 
 growth of abuses in private mad-houses in the opening years of 
 the eighteenth century, as depicted by the vivid pen of Defoe. 
 
 Standing to the east of the north road out of York is a large 
 red brick building, the Bootham Asylum for the Insane. It 
 had been in existence about fifteen years, when, in 1791, the 
 relatives of a patient who was a member of the Society of Friends 
 were refused access to her, and shortly afterwards were informed 
 that she was dead. Suspicions of neglect, and even of cruelty, 
 were aroused ; and the event impressed William Tuke with the 
 desire to establish a home for the mentally afflicted in the Society 
 of Friends, to be managed by members of their own communion 
 on humane and Christian principles. The proposal was novel, 
 and when submitted to the Friends of Yorkshire in the spring 
 of 1792, was coldly received. William Tuke's wife, Esther, was 
 herself hostile to her husband's scheme, saying he had so many 
 children emanating from his brain, and that " his last child was 
 going to be an idiot." On the other hand, his son Henry steadUy 
 supported the proposal, and Mary Maria Tuke happUy suggested 
 " Retreat " as the name of the proposed asylum. William 
 Tuke did not let the matter rest. He visited asylums, amongst 
 others, St. Luke's Hospital in London, where he found naked 
 patients, Is^ing chained on filthy straw. Reanimated by what he 
 had seen in these homes of misery, he renewed his proposition 
 at the York Summer Quarterly Meeting of 1792. It woiild again 
 have failed, but for the persuasive tact of his son Henry, who 
 supplied the suaviter in modo, which was lacking in his father's 
 fortiter in re. Lindley Murray was one of the band of philan- 
 thropists who watched with warm solicitude over the projected 
 Retreat. The site selected was one from which Fairfax and Leslie 
 had cannonaded York in 1644. Here, a century and a half 
 later, the institution which was to reply affirmatively to 
 
SAMUEL TUKE. 407 
 
 Macbeth's query, " Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased ? " 
 had its modest beginnings. 
 
 William Tuke is the central figure in its early management. 
 His brother-in-law, Timothy Maud, a surgeon of Bradford, was to 
 have been his helper, but his unexpected death compelled William 
 Tuke to superintend the establishment himself for about twelve 
 months. Dr. Fowler and Dr. Cappe were enlightened medical 
 advisers, but very much of the success of the holy experiment 
 was due to another Bradford man, George Jepson, of whom 
 Samuel Tuke says, " He was almost entirely a self-taught man, 
 yet so highly esteemed in his neighbourhood that he was the 
 counsellor of many of the country people for miles round his resi- 
 dence, in some of their most important private concerns, and he 
 may be said to have been a medical practitioner." George 
 Jepson and his excellent wife assumed the superintendence 
 of the Retreat in 1797. Of the association between George 
 Jepson and William Tuke, Samuel Tuke says, " It was indeed 
 a rare occurrence of circumstances which brought together two 
 minds — one so capable to design largely and wisely, the other 
 so admirably fitted to carry such designs into execution. The 
 two men, though exceedingly different, were one in an earnest love 
 to God and man, in disinterestedness and decision of character, 
 and therefore in a steady, constant perseverance which works 
 upward wherever truth and duty lead." 
 
 More patients came to the Retreat than had been at first 
 expected. The institution floiuished, and supporters gathered 
 round it when it was seen that the humane treatment practised 
 there was far more successful in the cure, or, if that were 
 impossible, in the amelioration of the condition of the insane than 
 the harsh and cruel measures before practised. 
 
 Samuel Tuke was hardly less interested in watching the pro- 
 gress of the Retreat, and, indeed, in the whole subject of the right 
 treatment of insanity, than were his father and grandfather. 
 In 1804, he is corresponding on these subjects with Dr. Hancock, 
 then residing in Edinburgh. In 1810, he makes this entry in his 
 journal : " I intend to collect all the knowledge I can in the theory 
 
408 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 of insanity, the treatment of the insane, and the construction of 
 asylums. For this purpose to collect and compare facts rather 
 than books ; also to avail myself of any opportunity of ascer- 
 taining the state of lunatic paupers in places where I may happen 
 to travel." In the next year he contributed to The Philanthro- 
 pisi, a periodical work edited by William Allen and others, a 
 paper on " The Condition of Insane Paupers," in which he 
 described a visit he had himself paid to a workhouse in the 
 South of England, where in the depth of a severe winter, confined 
 in narrow ceUs, he found women absolutely without clothes, and 
 men chained to posts in their apartments. 
 
 Whilst the operations of the Retreat were necessarily on a 
 somewhat restricted scale, 149 patients being admitted between 
 1796 and 1811, its influence soon began to extend far beyond its 
 own walls. As early as 1798, its work was known and recognised 
 on the Continent by Dr. de la Rive, and in 1801 by Pinel, who in 
 Paris had begun an enlightened treatment of insanity on lines 
 very similar to those adopted by WiQiam Tuke. The two men 
 worked for some time in entire ignorance of that which the other 
 was doing, Pinel being somewhat the earlier in the field. 
 
 In the interests of the insane everywhere, it was desirable 
 that the results of the experiment made at the Retreat should 
 be more widely known. Consequently in 1811, at his father's 
 request, Samuel Tuke began to write a Description of the 
 Retreat, and, to obtain more time for this engagement, dis- 
 continued his study of the Hebrew language, in which he had been 
 engaged. The book was published in 1813. Respecting it, its 
 author writes, " The work was commenced in a deep sense of 
 the sufferings of the insane. Their afflictions have often been 
 present with me in my retirement before God, and my prayer has 
 been that for the cares of the poor and needy who have no helper 
 He would arise. May He prosper this imperfect effort to awaken 
 public sjnnpathy towards them." The publication of this book 
 marked an era in the treatment of insanity. Sydney Smith, 
 then living at Foston Rectory, reviewed it in the pages of the 
 Edinburgh Review. The witty writer had himself visited the 
 
SAMUEL TUKE. 409 
 
 Retreat, and warmly commended the institution, saying, " It 
 is an example of patience, courage, and kindness, which cannot 
 be too highly commended or too widely diffused, and which we 
 are convinced wiU greatly bring into repute a mUder and better 
 
 method of treating the insane The present account 
 
 is given by Mr. Tuke, a respectable tea-dealer, living in York, 
 and given in a manner which we are quite sure the most opulent 
 and important of his customers could not excel." There were, 
 however, critics who looked upon the description of the Retreat 
 with very different eyes from those of the Edinburgh reviewer. 
 An anonymous writer, afterwards discovered to be the physician 
 at the York Asylum, complained, in the local papers, that the 
 object of the work was to injure other institutions. A prolonged 
 and heated controversy followed, brought to a dramatic close 
 on one of the last nights in 1813, when the north-western buildings 
 of the Asylum were discovered to be in flames. The origin of the 
 fire was never ascertained. Four patients at least perished in 
 the flames. The opposition to reform was now overcome, a 
 deplorable state of things being disclosed, which in time was 
 replaced by the same humane and rational system of treatment 
 that had already been tested at the Retreat. 
 
 In 1815, Samuel Tuke published another work, Practical 
 Hints on the Construction and Economy of Pauper Lunatic 
 Asylums. In 1841, he wrote an introduction to a work, by Dr. 
 Jacobi, On the Construction and Management of Hospitals for 
 the Insane. After William Tuke's death, his grandson succeeded 
 him as treasurer of the Retreat. 
 
 Whilst the energies of Samuel Tuke's character went forth 
 in certain well-marked channels, a biographer would be guilty 
 of a grave blunder who should represent him as a man dominated 
 by a few special hobbies, however important. 
 
 John Pease, speaking at his funeral, said : — 
 
 " Large was the circle in which the deceased moved, civilly, 
 socially, and religiously. Large is the vacant place caused by his 
 death. By birth and training he was well fitted for the position he 
 held ; but whilst the powers of his mind seemed so well adapted for 
 
410 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 discharging the duties of that position with propriety and accept- 
 ance, it was the riches of Divine grace which prepared and enabled 
 him to accomplish his work." 
 
 We have seen at what an early age Samuel Tuke entered on 
 business life. In this he was diligent and successful, though not 
 to the exclusion of diligence in the cultivation of his mental and 
 spiritual nature. His systematic study of the phenomena of 
 mental disease has already been referred to. When travelling 
 on behalf of his firm, Foster's Essays and Milton's poems were 
 his favourite companions, whilst a portion of Scripture reading 
 closed the engagements of every day. At the age of twenty-four 
 we find him recording a resolution to read some portion of the 
 Old or New Testament daily, and to appropriate some portion 
 of the day to internal examination ; " frequently to call to mind 
 the true nature of my situation and relation, as regards this and 
 the next life, and to recollect that though we can do nothing 
 of ourselves alone, yet that we must co-operate with the Divine 
 power." 
 
 In 1810, at the age of twenty-six, Samuel Tuke married 
 Priscilla Hack, of Chichester. Eighteen years of most happy 
 married life succeeded, terminated by the death of Priscilla 
 Tuke, leaving her partner a widower with a numerous family, 
 in whose bringing up he was greatly helped by his sister, Maria 
 Tuke. This great sorrow shadowed the remainder of Samuel 
 Tuke's life. 
 
 The early connection of his family with the Society of Friends 
 has been already referred to. Any accurate picture of the subject 
 of this sketch must give prominence to the place occupied by his 
 Quaker ancestry and training in the moulding of his character. 
 If he had not been a Friend he might probably have been both 
 a great and a good man, but he would not have been the man he 
 was. He might have been a skilful physician, or a wise philan- 
 thropist, or an eminent judge ; but our concern is with him as he 
 was. 
 
 He had an hereditary training in the details, as well as in the 
 spirit of the Quaker polity. He occupied, in succession, many 
 
SAMUEL TUKE. 4II 
 
 official stations in the Society, including those of clerk to his 
 Monthly and Quarterly Meetings, whilst for six years he was 
 clerk to the Yearly Meeting, over which he presided with distin- 
 guished ability and Christian courtesy. It was the time when the 
 Society was agitated by the discussions arising out of the publica- 
 tion of the Beacon by Isaac Crewdson. Very few of those who 
 assisted in those discussions remain to tell of the skill with which 
 Samuel Tuke guided the Yearly Meeting. We have seen old men 
 kindle with enthusiasm, as they have told of the strong feeling 
 excited by the events of 1835-6-7 ; of the strife of tongues, of 
 the opposing counsels which found expression on every hand, 
 till it sometimes seemed hopeless to try to record, in denomina- 
 tional phraseology, " the sense of the meeting." Then uprose the 
 clerk, who disentangled the essential threads of the discussion, 
 set aside or disregarded the irrelevant side issues which had been 
 imported into it, showed seemingly antagonistic speakers that they 
 were not so far separated as they had thought and that any docu- 
 ment issued by the Yearly Meeting must give due expression 
 to the truth on which each had insisted. By the time the clerk's 
 summing-up was ended, the meeting was ready to accept his 
 minute, sketched in perspicuous and sometimes stately English, 
 wherein men of different lines of thought found their views 
 expressed better than they could have expressed them themselves, 
 though in association with complementary declarations of Divine 
 truth, which gave to the whole the impress of harmonious 
 unity. 
 
 Whilst speaking of Samuel Tuke's abilities as a clerk, it may 
 be fair to mention that he was not always the easiest man for 
 other clerks to sit by. His singularly active mind and quick per- 
 ceptions were not always under the same severe control as when 
 presiding over the Yearly Meeting. Fifty years ago, the Query 
 whether the necessities of the poor were properly inspected and 
 relieved was wont to be answered by the prosperous representa- 
 tives of one congregation in the terms, " We have no poor 
 requiring relief ; nor the children of such, education." " More's 
 the pity, more's the pity," was the mental comment which the 
 
412 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 clerk of the Monthly Meeting heard Samuel Tuke murmuring to 
 himself, sotto voce. 
 
 When engaged in deep thought, Samuel Tuke would be long 
 silent, even when walking with a friend, and then unconsciously 
 say a few words, the significance of which not necessarily being 
 apparent to his companion, to the question, " What did thou 
 say, Samuel Tuke ? " would perhaps come the reply, " Ah ! did 
 I speak ? It was only a thought thawing." 
 
 About the year 1830, Samuel Tuke was concerned by observing 
 how many failures in business had occurred amongst the circle 
 of Friends in Yorkshire. His attention was also drawn, whilst 
 serving upon the Ackworth School Committee, to the need of 
 more provision for assurance at death, as well as for the oppor- 
 tunity of obtaining immediate or deferred annuities, by teachers 
 and others, earning salaries dependent for their continuance on 
 health and ability. In the autumn of 1831, whilst engaged on 
 religious service in Westmorland, he wrote to John Hipsley 
 (husband of his aunt Mabel), suggesting that he should submit a 
 proposition for the establishment of a new institution to supply 
 the wants just indicated, at the approaching Quarterly Meeting 
 at York. The Friends' Provident Institution enjoyed a more 
 propitious advent than did the York Retreat forty years 
 before. A suggestion for the foundation of an assvu"ance office 
 had already been made in general terms at the Ackworth General 
 Meeting of 1831. The Quarterly Meeting, or at least a conference 
 of Friends held during its sittings, now appointed a committee to 
 coUect information and to prepare rules. Samuel Tuke acted as 
 chairman, and Benjamin Ecroyd as secretary, to this provisional 
 committee. Gradually, with the aid of Mr. Newman, of the 
 Yorkshire Fire and Life Assurance Company, the scheme took 
 definite shape, and in a more mature form was submitted to the 
 Ackworth General Meeting of 1832. We have seen that WiUiam 
 Tuke had been associated with Bradford through his second 
 marriage, as well as by his long friendship with George Jepson. 
 In the struggle for the reform of the York Asylum, the Tukes 
 had been helped by their relative, WiUiam Maud, and by the 
 
SAMUEL TUKE. 413 
 
 purse of John Hustler, both Bradford men, and Benjamin 
 Ecroyd's residence in the same town probably helped to fix the 
 institution at Bradford. I cannot deal more concisely with 
 Samuel Tuke's early connection with the Friends' Provident 
 Institution, and his views upon life assurance, than by 
 quoting a few sentences from the report of the institution for 
 1858 :— 
 
 " It is with feelings of peculiar interest the directors have to notice 
 the decease of Samuel Tuke, who may be regarded as the founder of 
 this institution, for it was he who, prompted by suggestions contained 
 in the unpubUshed writings of his grandfather, William Tuke, 
 in the year 1808, first brought the desirableness and practicability 
 of such an establishment prominently into view, and was the man 
 who, with the aid of able coadjutors, called it into existence, and 
 prepared it to diffuse its benefits to those who might avail themselves 
 of its provisions. The directors think they cannot pay a better 
 tribute to the memory of their old friend than by recording his own 
 words in reference to the institution : ' A truly wise man may find 
 many avenues of wealth closed to him, and in the pursuit of those 
 which are lawful he is under the restraining influence of principles 
 which refer to higher and nobler acquisitions. But industry in 
 business, prudence in expenditure, and some restraint in present 
 indulgences, with a view to a moderate provision for future wants of 
 life, and for those who are dependent upon us, are among the general 
 effects of a sound rehgious state of mind ; and, on the contrary, 
 the idea that the pursuit of rehgion caUs for the abandonment of the 
 cares of life, that it is compatible with indolence or with the free 
 expenditure of our money upon what is unnecessary for us when we 
 have made no provision for the probable and almost certain 
 wants of sickness, age, or other vicissitudes of life, is utterly at 
 variance with true wisdom, and with that godliness which is 
 profitable for all things, for the Ufe which now is and for the life 
 which is to come.' " 
 
 Samuel Tuke was in the prime of life when he began to speak 
 as a mmister of the Gospel. Lee's portrait is said to be a good 
 representation of him at this period ; it was taken whilst he was 
 preaching. He was an admirable speaker, whether on the 
 platform or in the meeting-house gallery. His voice was clear 
 and sonorous, and he had a command of appropriate words for 
 
414 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 the accurate expression of his meaning, such as very few men 
 possess.* 
 
 Those who have followed this narrative thus far will have 
 recognised that Samuel Tuke was a man who combined natural 
 and acquired gifts of no common order ; but behind all these lay 
 a deep spiritual experience. We have already noted his appre- 
 hension when a child of the Divine presence. With him " the 
 child was father to the man," and all his days " bound each to 
 each by natural piety." The opening of 1824 was a season of 
 special spiritual visitation, which came in connection with a lively 
 sense of the largeness of the blessings which had been showered 
 upon him in his home life, in the prosperity which attended his 
 outward affairs, and above all, he adds, in the continuance of 
 spiritual favour, 
 
 " of that grace and good spirit striving in the heart pointing out the 
 way in which I ought to walk, and, blessed be His great and adorable 
 name, enabling me in degree to bow to His will and to take up His 
 cross. As to the process of the work in the soul, it is of Divine mercy 
 and nothing of human merit. It is God who inspires us with the 
 desire to work out our own salvation with fear and trembhng ; He 
 worketh in us both to wUl and to do of His good pleasure. For some 
 months past I have felt a greater desire to devote myself entirely to 
 the Divine will, and a greater power over the desires of the natural 
 mind, than for several years past ; but I write this with fear recalling r 
 the admonition, ' Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he 
 fall.' " 
 
 Any sketch of the life of Samuel Tuke would be singularly 
 incomplete that left out of view his manifold labours on behalf of 
 Christian education, and his insight into the principles on which 
 it should be conducted. We have already seen that his family 
 were almost as closely identified with the cause of education as 
 they were with reform in the treatment of the insane. It was 
 in the year of his birth that his grandparents established the 
 
 " Joseph Bevan Braithwaite once said : — " Samuel Tuke's eloquence 
 was delightful ; his choice of words singularly chaste, his manner calm and 
 impressive, his enunciation distinct and clear. With the possible exception 
 of John Bright at his best, I never remember a speaker to whom it was a 
 greater pleasure to listen." 
 
SAMUEL TUKE. 
 
 413 
 
 school for girls at York, which pursued its notable career to the 
 year 1814. In 1850, Samuel Tuke wrote respecting this school :— 
 
 " It was a noble effort of disinterested Christian love. The 
 women Friends who were engaged in it as shareholders were re- 
 ligiously concerned for the right education of their own sex, and most, 
 if not all the parties who were engaged as teachers may be said to 
 have been, according to their measure, like-minded. They were 
 chiefly volunteers, who sought in the care and deeply instructive 
 society of the matron of the institution, and her valued husband 
 who entered heartily into the engagement, a safe shelter and useful 
 employment." 
 
 After naming some of the chief helpers in the School, he 
 continued : — 
 
 " The domestic evening readings in the family were solemn and 
 instructive. Three, if not four members of the family became 
 ministers during their service in the school. It was the practice for 
 Friends travelling in the ministry to take up their abode in the family 
 during their stay in the city, and they had, it is believed, both by 
 example and exhortation, a profitable influence on the children under 
 their care. I have no doubt that the longing desires of the caretakers 
 were often, or at least often appeared to them to be disappointed ; 
 yet, having known the institution well in the first few years, and the 
 scholars who passed through it and have survived to rather a recent 
 period, I have no hesitation in expressing the sentiment that the 
 lively piety of its founders in their educational exertions was blessed 
 in no common degree ; yet let me leave a word of warning to my 
 friends not to suppose that by money and good wishes they can 
 produce the same effects." 
 
 The last sentence is singularly characteristic of the writer. 
 No inconsiderable part of his life was spent in founding, teaching, 
 and administering schools. He joined the Ackworth Committee 
 in 1812. About the same period he united in the foundation of 
 a British School for girls, and of a public lending library, in York. 
 In the year which witnessed the fight at Waterloo, he was teaching 
 an Adult First-day School ; he sometimes mentions in his diary 
 the presence of twenty scholars. He also himself taught the 
 prisoners in York Castle. He proposed the establishment 
 of the Yorkshire Quarterly Meeting's Boys' School, and 
 
4l6 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 joined two years later in promoting that of the Girls' School. 
 He supported John Hipsley and others in the foundation of 
 Rawdon School. He was one of the original trustees of the 
 Flounders Institute. At an earUer period he took an active 
 part in personally investigating the state of education amongst 
 the poor in York, and was a munificent supporter of the Boys' 
 British School. But more worthy of note than his labours amidst 
 cill this educational machinery was his comprehension of, and 
 steady insistence upon, the fundamental principles which underlie 
 education, in the true meaning of that often misapplied word. 
 It was at the gatherings of the Friends' Educational Society, 
 held at the times of the Ackworth General Meetings in the forties, 
 that its president had the opportunity for those luminous ex- 
 positions of the philosophy of education, deduced largely from 
 the facts elicited by his own historical researches, which now, 
 after the lapse of many years, remain eloquent reminders that 
 man cannot be put into an educational lathe to be turned out 
 like a piece of furniture ; that whilst schools have their service 
 of exceeding value, and whilst the work of teachers is one of the 
 noblest of professions, yet to parents is given, in the Divine 
 economy, an influence which cannot be delegated to any one.* 
 
 We can do little more than note, in passing, Samuel Tuke's 
 work as an author. | His Selections from the Epistles, &c. of 
 George Fox, his Memoirs of the Life of Stephen Crisp, and his 
 Memoirs of George Whitehead deserve to be more read than they 
 are. Samuel Tuke's attitude towards the first generation of 
 Friends was very sympathetic. He was far from being an 
 indiscriminate apologist for all that they did and wrote, but 
 undoubtedly he felt a very close fellowship with their spirits; 
 and he entertained a profound admiration for the depth of their 
 insight into Divine things, and the whole-heartedness of their 
 consecration to Christ. His introduction to Selections from the 
 Epistles, &c., of George Fox shows his appreciation of the 
 character of the writer, and the spiritual affinity he cherished 
 with the truths embedded in those rugged, broken sentences. 
 * See Five Papers. f See pp. 420, 421. 
 
SAMUEL TUKE. 417 
 
 Samuel Tuke was a reader and admirer, too, of the more 
 mystical writings of Isaac Penington. The following passage 
 was one of his favourites : — 
 
 " It is not enough to hear of Christ, or read of Christ ; but this is 
 the thing — to feel Him my root, my Ufe, my foundation ; and my 
 soul engrafted into Him, by Him who hath power to engraft. Rest 
 not in an outward knowledge, but come to the inward life, and receive 
 Ufe from Him who is the Life ; and then abide in and hve to God, 
 in the life of His Son ; for death and destruction, corruption and 
 vanity, may talk of the fame of Christ, who is the wisdom of God, 
 but they cannot know or find out the place where this wisdom is 
 revealed." 
 
 In drawing these notes to a close we may recall that Samuel 
 Tuke has himself pointed out both the lessons to be derived from 
 biographical study and the dangers which accompany it. In 
 1813, his relative, William Alexander, issued the first number of 
 The Annual Monitor, a periodical work which was to be devoted 
 in part to the publication of the memoirs of deceased Friends. 
 In 1842, the editorship of this work was principally undertaken 
 by Samuel Tuke, and he continued to assist in its preparation for 
 several years. In the introductory remarks to The Annual 
 Monitor of 1843, he says, in reference to former numbers, 
 " Many an instructive or animating lesson, and many a solemn 
 warning, have, we believe, passed from these pages to the minds 
 of readers of every age and station in life." He then points out 
 some of the dangers attendant upon publishing these notices of 
 departed Friends. He speaks of the undue importance which 
 survivors are apt to attach to the memories of those whom 
 they have loved, and how affection prompts the desire to honour 
 their memories. " It is thus," he says, " that monuments to the 
 dead and laudatory epitaphs have been multiplied, and become 
 part of a mere customary and false honour . . . and the same 
 natural feeling which has led to the vaui honours of the cemetery 
 may indulge itself in our very humble records." Some wise 
 remarks follow on the delicacy due to the deceased, in regard to 
 the publication of the secret communings of their hearts, and 
 the sacred relationship between themselves and God, of the 
 
 28 
 
4l8 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 liability to over-estimate the value of death-bed expressions, 
 though these may at times loudly " speak of the vanity of the 
 world, and the value of the soul, ... of the struggles of 
 the stricken conscience, and the blood which speaketh better 
 things than that of Abel ; and there is seen the blessedness of 
 the Christian pilgrim, leaning on the staff of his Lord, and ready 
 to enter into the city of God." Subsequently he remarks that 
 " it is no disparagement of true spiritual knowledge and feeling 
 that these have their counterfeits in the human chambers of 
 imagery " ; and then, turning to the broad lessons to be derived 
 from Christian biography, he adds : — 
 
 " It is both instructive and interesting to trace the circumstances 
 under which sound Christian character has been formed and sustained, 
 to review the experimental history of the religious life, and the 
 practical evidences of a living faith in Christ. We are very desirous 
 that aU our biographical sketches should be characteristic, rather 
 than eulogistic ; and that a faithful portrait, exhibiting the shades, 
 as well as the hghts, of character should be presented to our 
 readers." 
 
 In 1849, ^ paralytic affection withdrew Samuel Tuke from 
 the activities of hfe. He ralhed from the first attack, but never 
 regained his previous powers. Whilst these simset years were 
 sometimes irradiated by the beauty of mellowed Christian 
 experience, the natmre of the complaint probably increased an 
 already present tendency to gloom and spiritual discouragement, 
 which it would be uncandid altogether to ignore, especially in 
 view of the sound biographical canons just quoted. 
 
 Samuel Tuke's temperament was not naturally buoyant. 
 He had not the habitual hopefulness which characterised his 
 friend and colleague, James Backhouse. His views of his own 
 spiritual state were sometimes morbidly mistrustful. His mind 
 did not easily rest. It was ever at work, often pondering the 
 sad enigmas of human life. That powerful intellect woidd again 
 and again review the phenomena of mental disease. It was 
 distressed at the evidences of sin, and at the deceitfulness of the 
 human heeirt, as evidenced in personal experience, in the facts of 
 every-day life, in the annals of the past, in the failures of 
 
SAMUEL TUKE. 
 
 419 
 
 philanthropic and political schemes for the amelioration of the 
 race, in the infirmities of even good men, or in the contentions 
 within the Church. There was no exemption from private 
 sorrows, and a sensitive conscience, trained from childhood, 
 kept a lifelong censorship over the details of personal conduct. 
 Thus "the still, sad music of humanity" was constantly sounding 
 in the chambers of that master mind. It is not difficult to see 
 why such a man was thought severe and unapproachable by 
 many who knew him but slightly. There was nothing superficial 
 in his character. His perceptions, feminine in their sensibihty, 
 in association with a masculine understanding, went to the root 
 of things, and could lay bare with relentless force the weak places 
 in crude or sentimental schemes. Samuel Tuke's mind was 
 singularly free from the falsehood of extremes, hence he never 
 could have been a great party leader ; whilst his influence was 
 invaluable in exposing the danger of exaggerated statements in 
 dogma or philosophy. 
 
 It may be asked. If his conception of human nature was so 
 humbling, was not his apprehension of the redeeming, transforming, 
 purifying, ennobling power of the Gospel of Christ correspondingly 
 comprehensive ? Undoubtedly it was. But it seemed as if his 
 mind could not but revert to the unwillingness of man to let the 
 redeeming power of Christ do its full work. 
 
 In 1817, he attended a Quarterly Meeting at Leeds, and on 
 returning he deplores the lack of labourers in the garden of the 
 Society, and thinks his grandfather almost the last relic of a race 
 of worthies whose like they may not look upon again. 
 
 " Why," he goes on to query, " are we so degenerate ? Are the 
 vessels saying to Him who formed them, ' What doest thou ? ' 
 There is," he adds, " a great want of simple devotion amongst us. 
 We wish to work in our own way, to eat our own bread and drink our 
 own water, but yet to be called by the name of Christ. We wish to 
 be called disciples, but are not willing to be conformed to the simpUcity 
 of our Master's birth, or the sufferings of His death." 
 
 If to the many talents entrusted to Samuel Tuke there had 
 been added a larger and more joyful hopefulness, his service 
 might have been even more fruitful than it was, and the pages of 
 
420 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 his biography more cheerful reading. And yet as we review 
 that biography in the perspective of the well-nigh forty years 
 which have passed since his death, may we not say that there 
 have been few, if any, lives in the present centxiry more rich in 
 teaching to the readers of this magazine ? How — ^in his own 
 favourite Scripture — ^is patience in running the Christian race 
 stimulated by the example of one who might have adorned high 
 judicial ofl&ce, or commanded the applause of listening senates, 
 but who better fulfilled his calling by discharging the duties of 
 the merchant, the citizen, the philanthropist, and the Christian 
 minister — ^not to speak of those within the sanctuary of home — 
 and, in his sphere as a Friend, was eminently enabled to serve his 
 fellow-men, and to glorify his Lord and Master. 
 
 The end came 14th October, 1857. On the evening preceding 
 the fatal attack, the lines had been read : — 
 
 " In Thee, my hiding-place divine, 
 
 Be rest throughout life's joumeyings given ; 
 Then sweeter, holier rest be mine 
 With Thee in heaven." 
 
 The last line struck a responsiye chord, and the dying saint 
 faintly repeated the words : — 
 
 " With Thee in heaven:" 
 
 Bibliographical Note. 
 
 The following list of publications by Samuel Tuke may 
 prove of interest to readers : — 
 
 . Treatment of the Insane : Condition of Insane Paupers, in The 
 Philanthropist, 181 1 ; Description of the Retreat, an Institution near 
 York, for Insane Persons of the Society of Friends . . . with 
 plans, etc. York, 8vo and 4to, pp. 227, 1813; Several Letters to 
 York Newspapers on the Abuses of the York Asylum, 181 3-14 ; Prac- 
 tical Hints on the Construction and Economy of Pauper Lunatic 
 Asylums . . Wakefield Asylum. York, 8vo, pp. 55, 181 5 ; 
 Introductory observations on The Construction and Management of 
 
SAMUEL TUKE. 421 
 
 Hospitals for the Insane, by Dr. Maximilian Jacobi, translated by 
 John Batching. London and York, 8vo, 1841 ; Review of the Early 
 History of the Retreat. York, 8vo, pp. 50, 1846. 
 
 Slavery : Account of the Slavery of Friends in the Barbary States, 
 towards the close of the Seventeenth Century. London, 8vo, pp. 24, 
 1848. 
 
 Biography : Memoirs of the Life of Stephen Crisp, with selections 
 from his works. York, i2mo, pp. 440, 1824 ; A Word in Season, 
 from Stephen Crisp's Epistle of Tender Love ; Memoirs of George 
 Whitehead . . with an Appendix containing a selection from his 
 works. York, 2 vols, i2mo, pp. 295 and 356, 1830; A Letter to 
 John Wilkinson on . . his Letter of Resignation. London, 8vo, 
 pp. 53, 1836 ; Selections from the Epistles, etc., of George Fox. York, 
 i2mo, pp. 460, 1825 ; London, i2mo, 1848 ; Philadelphia, i2mo, 
 1858. 
 
 Christian Discipline : Remarks on the Observation made on the 
 Discipline of the Quakers by the Monthly Reviewers in their 
 Examination of William Rathbone's Narrative and Memoir [Amicus). 
 London, 8vo, pp. 20, 1806 ; On the Origin of the Christian Discipline 
 established among Friends as introduction to Book of Discipline. 
 London, 1834, 1861, 1883, 1906. Also published separately; A 
 Few Thoughts on the Serious Character of the Objects of a Yearly 
 Meeting and the State of Mind suited to its Engagements. By an in- 
 valid. London ; On the Character and Doctrine of the Early Friends. 
 Tract No. 102 of Friends' Tract Association. London, i2mo. 
 
 Education : Five Papers on the Past Proceedings and Experience 
 of the Society of Friends in connection with the Education of Youth. 
 York, 8vo, pp. 128, 1834. 
 
 Miscellaneous : Sermon preached at Devonshire House Meeting- 
 house, London, in 1832, in Addresses delivered by . . . of the 
 Society of Friends. London, i2mo, 1834 ; Christmas Customs 
 and Christian Morality (Anon.). York, i2mo, 1835, 1836, pp. 8 ; 
 The Annual Monitor, edited from 1842 to 1852 ; The Identity of 
 Religion in all Ages. York, i2mo, 1845. 
 
 Lives of Samuel Tuke : Memoirs of Samuel Tuke. Only twenty- 
 six copies printed for private circulation, in two volumes. Large 8vo, 
 1859 ; Samuel Tuke, His Life, Work, and Thoughts. By Charles 
 Tylor. London, 8vo, 1900, pp. 283. See also The Annual Monitor, 
 1858, p. 173; and The Dictionary of National Biography. — [Editor.] 
 
APPENDICES. 
 
APPENDIX I. 
 
 NOTICES OF OTHER WORKS BY 
 J. S. ROWNTREE. 
 
 QUAKERISM, PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 ' I *HIS " Inquiry into the causes of the decline of Quakerism in 
 A Great Britain and Ireland" gained the first prize of one hun- 
 dred guineas in an open competition, held in 1858. The number and 
 ability of the competing essays afforded, in the words of the 
 examiners, " gratifying testimony to the interest which the subject 
 has excited." The award was given in 1859, and signed by the 
 Rev. F. D. Maurice, Rev. E. S.Pryce, and Professor J. P. Nichol, the 
 prize essay being afterwards published by Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co., 
 of London. 
 
 Quakerism, Past and Present contains eight chapters. The line 
 of argument adopted is stated in the preface, as follows : " The 
 reader wiU find his attention first directed to the historical and social 
 features of the epoch in which the Society of Friends arose, these 
 having powerfully influenced the conduct of its founders. The 
 author next examines the doctrines and practices of the early 
 Friends, with especial reference to such of them as appear to have 
 occasioned or accelerated the Society's decline. He then endeavours 
 to ascertain the numbers of the Friends at different periods of their 
 history, and to determine the extent of their recent dimiuution. The 
 succeeding chapter (the fifth) is occupied with the second epoch of 
 the Society's history, extending from the death of George Fox, in 
 1691, to the revival of the discipline in 1760. The sixth and seventh 
 chapters examine the causes of decline which have most prominently 
 manifested themselves within the last hundred years ; and the essay 
 is concluded by a summary of the previous argument, and a resume 
 of the whole case presented in a condensed form." 
 
 The author's conclusion is expressed in the leist chapter, entitled, 
 " Modem Causes of the Society's DecUne," from which the following 
 paragraphs are quoted : — 
 
 425 
 
426 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 "On a recent occasion the Society of Friends expressed the 
 opinion that its mission was far from accompUshed — that there is a 
 great work still before it. Reviewing the present aspect of 
 Christendom, thoughtful members of many sections of the one true 
 Church, anxious for the advancement of our common faith, will 
 unite in this opinion. One point we regard as certain : there is so 
 much of truth in its fundamental principles, when rightly under- 
 stood, that they are indestructible ; and whether the exposition of 
 these truths remains with the Society of Friends, or passes into other 
 hands, the knowledge of them can never again be banished from the 
 earth. . . . No mystery hangs over the causes which have 
 occasioned the decay of the body ; many of those causes are still in 
 operation, and if unremoved, can issue in but one result — the ex- 
 tinction of the Church which permits their continuance. It is not 
 given to any Church to infringe with impunity on the rights of 
 religious liberty, to narrow the basis on which it stands, or to frame 
 the arrangements for reUgious exercises as if intended for beings 
 differently constituted from men. The great lesson we deduce from 
 the story of Quakerism closely corresponds with that drawn by the 
 eloquent historian of the Puritans, from a review of their chequered 
 experience. Describing a healthy Church, he writes : ' It must 
 stand upon a generous basis ; ... its terms of communion 
 must be few ; it must hold the essentials of salvation (without which 
 it were indeed no Church) ; and it must endeavour to comprehend 
 those, whatever their weaknesses, who subscribe to the apostohc 
 canon in their lives, and give sufficient evidence that they ' love the 
 Lord Jesus in sincerity.' Other methods have been tried in vain. 
 We know the price at which a rigid adherence to rubrical observances 
 must be purchased. We have seen the consequences of a rigid 
 uniformity, and we have seen the emptiness of a ' traditional ' zeal. 
 Shall we for ever tread in the erring footsteps of our forefathers ? ' * 
 
 " It was no part of the inquiry which this essay professes to answer, 
 as to what are the remedies for the present condition of the Society of 
 Friends ; those who have perused the preceding pages will easily 
 discover the direction in which the author apprehends these remedies 
 may be found. If further suggestions be permitted, he would say, 
 ' Cease to do evil ' ; stay these suicidal disownments for offencesf 
 which, if injudicious, are not immoral ; widen the grounds of 
 Christian fellowship ; maintain ' unity in essentials, Uberty in 
 non-essentials ' ; and let ' charity prevail over ah.' Then, 
 ■ ceasing to do evil,' the Society would ' learn to do well ' ; re- 
 
 * Marsden's Later Puritans, 472. 
 
 ■f Mainly, marrying one not a member of the Society, and paying 
 church-rates and tithes. 
 
APPENDIX I. 427 
 
 suming the aggressive spirit of olden times, it would find unnumbered 
 ways for its exercise ; it would discover in this Island alone a 
 population existing without the pale of Christian influences, more 
 numerous than that which inhabited the whole of England in 1650, 
 asking to be won for Christ ; it would find that, when rightly under- 
 stood, there is nothing incompatible between a belief in the 
 immediate guidance of the Holy Spirit and ' freedom of Gospel 
 ministry,' and the prosecution of missions for instructing the 
 ignorant and evangelising the heathen. In pursuing these fields of 
 service, it would find no mental faculty could be dispensed with — 
 no part of man's nature could be ignored ; the human reason must 
 occupy the sphere appointed by its great Creator ; human instru- 
 mentality must be prayed for and encouraged — not, indeed, to the 
 disparagement of spiritual agency — far otherwise. ' Except the 
 Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it,' but all being 
 done in dependence on the Divine blessing, with singleness of heart, 
 and in the manner God has ordained. His Spirit would be richly poured 
 out in accordance with ancient prophecy, and this section of the 
 Church would experience a degree of prosperity as yet unknown to 
 it ; so, fulfilling some of the splendid and unaccomplished expec- 
 tations of its founders, it, might be the honoured instrument for 
 widely extending the blessed kingdom of our Lord ■ and Saviour, 
 Jesus Christ." 
 
 AN INQUIRY INTO THE TRUTHFULNESS OF 
 LORD MACAULAY'S PORTRAITURE OF GEORGE FOX. 
 
 THIS book consists of two lectures and was published in 1861, 
 by A. W. Bennett, of London. The preface explains that the 
 lectures, originally delivered before a local association, were largely 
 re-written, and added to for publication. This further use of the 
 work was decided upon because no serious public objection had then 
 been taken to that view of George Fox's character put forward in 
 Lord Macaulay's History of England. 
 
 Put briefly, J. S. Rowntree's argument is that a man who in his 
 actions continually showed himself great, wise, and in advance of his 
 time, cannot have been the commonplace weakling whom Macaulay 
 describes, even though it should be proved that in a few instances he 
 was foolish or mistaken. 
 
 The first lecture gives a general description of the condition of 
 English society in the reign of Elizabeth, and of the rise of the Puritan 
 party. It proceeds to deal with the religious dissensions of succeeding 
 
428 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 years — especially the beginning of the seventeenth century, during 
 which George Fox was bom. The early life and religious exercises of 
 Fox are carefully pictured, as well as his spiritual development and 
 commencement of pubUc service. The author closes this lecture 
 with an account of what may be called Fox's ecclesiastical states- 
 manship, including his treatment of the subject of Friends' marriages, 
 of education in the Society, and of the establishment of the Friends' 
 disciplinary system. 
 
 The second lecture deals with the presentation of Fox's character 
 and work given by Lord Macaulay. The author examines this, 
 and, with the help of numerous independent authorities, comes to a 
 conclusion, entirely opposed to that of Lord Macaulay, which he 
 summarises in the following words (extracted by the Editor from a 
 fuUer statement) : — 
 
 " All the evidence I have to adduce, is now before you ; it only 
 remains for me briefly to retrace the ground we have travelled over. 
 Neither the subject nor my materials are exhausted, but the narrow 
 limits of a popular lecture are perhaps already transgressed. Nothing 
 has been said of Fox's services in the cause of civil and religious 
 liberty ; his plans for prison reform, and the amelioration of the penal 
 code have been but distantly alluded to. It would be easy to show 
 how far he was before his epoch on these, as on other subjects ; 
 but surely the case we have examined this evening is far too strong 
 to suffer from the exclusion of this surplus evidence. I beUeve 
 every one in this room is now convinced that it is a caricature and 
 not a likeness of George Fox, suspended in Macaulay's portrait 
 gallery. That such should be the fact I much regret, for no popular 
 historian has yet given to Fox his right place in the galaxy of 
 England's great men — and could Lord Macaulay but have compre- 
 hended the man he has caricatured, he might have adorned his pages 
 with a picture of singular beauty and interest ; for Fox's mind 
 belonged to a class of which our country has produced but few 
 representatives. . . 
 
 " The fixed points established by our preliminary researches have 
 enabled us cheerfully to grant that George Fox sometimes argued 
 illogically, sometimes wrote with great obscurity, and sometimes 
 acted injudiciously — and yet to maintain, that after these deduc- 
 tions, a large balance of evidence remains unimpeached, amply 
 sufficient to stamp him both a good and a great man. 
 
 " Lord Macaulay says George Fox was crazy ; we analysed some 
 of the supposed proofs of madness — ^the seeing of visions and the cast- 
 ing out of devils, and demonstrated by numerous examples that a 
 belief in supernatural interpositions has been far from uncommon, 
 with men eminent for wisdom and for piety. His writings are as 
 
APPENDIX I. 
 
 429 
 
 unintelligible as corrupt Hebrew, says Lord Macaulay ; we succeeded 
 in translating into modem English the one passage adduced in 
 support of this statement ; we also read extracts from the earliest 
 editions of his books, and found them at least intelligible. Yet we 
 freely allowed that action rather than authorship was Fox's forte. 
 His refusal to take ofE his hat, and his antipathy to bowing, are said 
 to have been dictated by the most absurd reasons. On examination 
 we discovered that the version of the scene before the Chief Justice, 
 given by Lord Macaulay, was a palpable misrepresentation of facts, 
 the real reasons for these refusals to comply with the ordinary 
 customs of society being very different from what was asserted — ^in 
 both cases high and holy considerations, leading Fox into a line of 
 conduct which wiU be viewed variously by different persons ; but 
 one that all must allow proved his integrity of purpose, so severe was 
 the suffering it entailed upon him. 
 
 " Advancing to the next branch of our subject, I trust the theory 
 which attributes to mere caprice the distinctive views and practices 
 adopted by George Fox was proved to be erroneous ; and further, 
 that so far from these being unheard-of novelties, there was hardly 
 one which had not been upheld in previous ages of the Church — not 
 seldom in the days of its greatest purity. The disturbance of public 
 worship by some of the early Friends was the next topic discussed : 
 allied to it was the sanctioning of certain fanatical actions that is 
 alleged against Fox. I thiak substantial cause was shown for largely 
 modif5ring the severity of the censure, with which our age visits these 
 acts ; but we admitted they were blemishes in his character, which 
 must be regretted. In conclusion, we examined and rejected 
 Macaulay's theory, which attributes the good points of Quakerism 
 to a revolution effected in its nature by Robert Barclay and William 
 Penn. Extracts from the writings of Thomas Ell wood and WiUiam 
 Penn, also from five modem authors,* corroborating my general 
 positions, completed the case for the defence. In conducting it, 
 my desire has been to set forth the simple truth — to avoid any offensive 
 expression against the noble author I so widely differ from — and also 
 to abstain from anything like a canonisation of George Fox. 
 
 " Simple justice is all I demand for him at the hands of the his- 
 torian — he needs no more. In the historic portrait galleries of the 
 seventeenth century — ^in that magnificent assembly where are ranged 
 the Ukenesses of Cromwell and of Milton, of Hampden and Falkland, 
 of Pascal, Baxter, Bunyan, Leighton, Penn, Russell, Sidney, Locke, 
 and a host besides — let there be likewise an honest portrait of George 
 Fox ; paint him, as Cromwell insisted on being painted — with all his 
 
 * i.e., Carlyle, F. D. Maurice, Bancroft, R.A. Vaughan and Wm. Rhodes. 
 
430 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 scars and with every wrinkle — and you will still have before you the 
 figure of a great though a humble man, for he fervently said that it 
 was by the grace of God, he was what he was " 
 
 THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS : ITS FAITH AND PRACTICE. 
 
 JOHN S. ROWNTREE wrote several papers — some on current 
 Society problems, others on public questions and antiquarian 
 matters connected with his native city of York — ^not included 
 or referred to in this volume. To meet the need for a good, short 
 handbook to the history and faith of the Society of Friends, he also 
 prepared a book of about one hundred pages, entitled : — The Society 
 of Friends : its Faith and Practice. This was first pubhshed in 
 March, 1901, since which time three editions have been called for. 
 The first portion of the book is an historical introduction. Then 
 follow "Faith and Polity of the Friends," "Christian Life and 
 Practice," and a series of statistical and other notes. The book 
 concludes as follows : — 
 
 " Recurring to the Apostle's counsel, be ' ready always to give 
 answer to every man that asketh you a reason concerning the hope 
 that is in you, yet with meekness and fear,' I recognise that it is in 
 this meek spirit that the Friends should set forth their faith and 
 practice. None know better than themselves that they are but a 
 feeble people, as contrasted with what they might have been. Yet 
 it would be a grave mistake to account them the representatives 
 of a spent force. They stiU have a message to the members of other 
 communities, as well as to those outside the Churches, including the 
 agnostic ; and their history is instinct with teaching for their own 
 people. Their presentation of Christianity is one which pre-emi- 
 nently requires the presence of spiritual life to commend it to its own 
 professors or to others. In the absence of Ufe, the very disuse of 
 forms and ceremonies may itself develop an unlovely formalism, 
 destitute of the beauty which may be embalmed even in a dead 
 form. The profession of a Friend carrying with it large responsi- 
 bilities, as well as ennobling privileges, demands the dedication of 
 the whole nature. The Society has suffered from sometimes allowing 
 integral parts of Gospel truth to be under-valued, but these losses have 
 been shght compared with those that have attended the inroads of 
 the worldly spirit, which under an endless variety of forms, is cease- 
 lessly at enmity with God. It is a mistake to suppose that this 
 spirit was not present in the earUest and most active days of the 
 Society's history. It is also a mistake to account every change in 
 
APPENDIX I. 431 
 
 the outward manifestations of Christian life a token of declension. 
 Every change must be judged on its own merits. A free, self-govern- 
 ing Church, believing in the constant presence in its midst of the 
 Holy Ghost, should be able readily to adapt its procedure to the 
 constantly changing requirements of the age. Many changes made 
 from time to time in the usages of Friends have been signs of Ufe : 
 such have been the growth of anti-slavery, temperance, and mis- 
 sionary effort, practical interest in the education of their own mem- 
 bers, and their extensive Sunday School work, particularly amongst 
 adults. 
 
 " The moral and reUgious condition of the British nation at the 
 opening of the twentieth century is marked by many points of simi- 
 larity to that existing in the middle and later years of the seventeenth. 
 In an age intoxicated by the accumulation of wealth, by the pursuit 
 of pleasure, by the possession of great material forces, it is for the 
 Friends still to witness in the walks of ordinary life to the reality and 
 the nearness of the spiritual world, to urge the claims of the kingdom 
 of Christ upon the reluctant allegiance of men, to insist that the 
 changeless tokens of that kingdom, ahke in individuals and in 
 communities, are righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. 
 This kingdom carries with it the credentials of its regal claims. The 
 tests of spiritual and moral forces are their out-growths in human 
 character. When Whittier writes : — 1 
 
 'In joy of inward peace, or sense 
 Of sorrow over sin, 
 He is His own best evidence. 
 His witness is within ' ; 
 
 he does but put into English speech the truth on which the Apostle 
 insisted when he besought the Roman Christians, by the mercies of 
 God, to dedicate their whole selves as living' sacrifices, that they might 
 ' prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.' 
 If in this direction the Friends have a message to those outside the 
 Churches, they beUeve there is a great need for the Churches them- 
 selves to be aroused to bear a clearer witness to the moral and spiritual 
 side of Christianity, menaced as it is by the excessive veneration of 
 ceremonialism, as well as by the intrusion of a music-hall morality, 
 and the unspiritualising influences of wealth, pleasure, lust, and 
 militarism. 
 
 One of our foremost historians has recently given the world his 
 estimate of the Friends' work, in terms we should not have ventured 
 to employ. We beheve, however, that he has accurately defined 
 the ideal which they have had set before them, and have sought to 
 
432 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 live up to — subject, of course, to the manifold limitations and im- 
 perfections of humanity. No community can have been called to a 
 loftier service, nor one less Uable from the lapse of time to become 
 obsolete. ' When the Quakers entered into history, it was indeed 
 high time, for the worst of Puritanism was that in so many of its 
 phases it dropped out the Sermon on the Mount. . . Quakerism 
 has undergone many developments, but in all of them it has been 
 the most devout of all endeavours to turn Christianity into the 
 religion of Christ.' " * 
 
 Morley's Cromwell, 429. 
 
APPENDIX II. 
 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 
 
 Papal Supremacy abolished in England - - - 1534 
 
 Tyndale's English Bible published - - . 1536 
 
 Rise of Puritanism - - - . iccq 
 
 Robert Brown, the first " Independent " - - 1550 (?)-i633 (?) 
 
 Jacob Behmen - - . . 1 575-1624 
 
 George Herbert - - - . - . . 1 593-1632 
 
 John Milton - - . . 1608-1674 
 
 English Bible, Authorised Version - - - 161 1 
 
 The Pilgrim Fathers ..... igjo 
 
 Blaise Pascal .... 1623-1662 
 
 George Fox born ..... 1624 
 
 Michael Molinos ... . 1640- 1696 
 
 John Bunyan ...... 1628-1688 
 
 John Locke - - ... 1632-1704 
 
 Madame Guyon - - - 1648-1717 
 
 George Fox began his Ministry ... 1647 
 
 Quakers. A name coined by Justice Bennet of Derby - 1650 
 
 Settlement of Friends' earliest Meetings for Discipline - 1653 
 
 James Milner and Richard Myer "went out into imagina- 
 tions " (G.F.) - 1653 
 More than Sixty Ministers declaring " the Truth " - 1654 
 George Fox's imprisonment at Launceston - - 1655 
 One thousand Friends imprisoned in Great Britain ; Mary 
 Fisher and Anne Austin visit America. Fall of James 
 Nayler ...... 1656 
 
 General Meeting at Scalehouse, Skipton ; Collections to 
 promote visits of Friends beyond the seas. Death of 
 Cromwell. Yearly Meeting at John Crook's, Bed- 
 fordshire ...... 1658 
 
 Martyrdom of Mary Dyer, Marmaduke Stevenson, 
 
 Wilham Leddra, and William Robinson, at Boston. 1659-1660 
 Restoration of Charles 11. - - - - 1660 
 
 433 
 
 29 
 
434 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 John Perrot and Charles Baily " turned aside from the 
 
 unity of Friends and Truth " (G.F.) - - 1661 
 
 4,200 Friends prisoners. Death of Edward Burrough - 1662 
 
 Act of Uniformity. St. Bartholomew's Day. Ejectment of 
 
 2,000 Nonconformist Ministers ... 1662 
 
 George Fox imprisoned in Lancaster and Scarborough 
 
 Castles ....-- 1663-1666 
 
 Conventicle Act passed ----- 1664 
 
 EstabUshment of Monthly Meetings - - - 1 666-1 667 
 
 Five Mile Act passed - - . - - 1665 
 
 Friends' Marriage Procedure revised. Waltham and 
 
 Shacklewell Schools. Milton's "Paradise Lost" - 1667 
 
 Robert Barclay and WiUiam Penn join the Friends - 1667-1668 
 
 "Canons and Institutions" issued. (Published in 
 adverse pamphlet, 1669.) Recommended that 
 disorderly walkers be exhorted and report made ; 
 provision made for children of first marriages ; chil- 
 dren to be trained up in the fear of the Lord ; and 
 books to be provided for registering Births, Mar- 
 riages and Burials. 
 
 William Penn's " No Cross, No Crown," Part I. Marriage 
 
 of George Fox and Margaret Fell - - - 1669 
 
 Further Regulations on Marriage Procedure promulgated. 
 Conventicle Act renewed. Great persecutions of 
 Friends ; trial of WilUam Penn and William Meade 1670 
 
 George Fox recommends that the condemnation of such 
 as went out from truth into disorderly practices, and 
 the repentance and restoration of such as returned 
 again, be recorded in a book for that purpose. G.F. 
 visits West Indies ----- 167I 
 
 Liberation of many Friends from prison, also of John 
 
 Bunyan. George Fox visits Maryland - - 1672 
 
 First Representative Yearly Meeting in London - - 1673 
 
 Great opposition to settiement of Women's Meeting for 
 Discipline. William Penn's " Alexander the Copper- 
 smith." Test Act passed - - - - 1673 
 
 Meeting-house built in New York. New York a Quaker 
 
 Colony ------ 1674 
 
 Wilkinson-Story separation. Opposition to Women's 
 
 Meetings and the Friends' discipline generally - 1675 
 
 George Fox's "Encouragement to all the Women's 
 Meetings in the world." Robert Barclay's "An- 
 archy of the Ranters," and " Apologia." Drawwell 
 Conference, lasting four days - - 1676 
 
APPENDIX n. 435 
 
 George Fox visits Holland and Germany - - 1677 
 
 One hundred and forty-nine names of Meetings of Quakers 
 in North and West Ridings of Yorkshire officially 
 recorded ---... 1677-1716 
 Spirit of separation rife. Wilkinson, Story and Rogers - 1677 
 
 " Pilgrim's Progress" (Paxil) published - - 1678 
 
 W. Rogers' " Christian Quaker " - - . 1680-1682 
 
 William Penn's " State of Liberty Spiritual " - - 1681 
 
 WiUiam Penn founds Philadelphia. Thomas Ellwood's 
 
 "Antidote to WiUiam Rogers." Great persecution 1682 
 
 William Rogers' "Scourge" and "Second Scourge for 
 
 George Whitehead " .... 1683-1684 
 
 George Fox visits Holland .... 1684 
 
 Death of Charles II. More than 5,100 Friends imprisoned 
 during his reign ; 1,383 Friends in gaol on accession 
 of James II. Release of many Friend prisoners - 1685 
 
 Revocation of Edict of Nantes. Thomas Ellwood's 
 
 " Rogero Mastix " ..... 1685 
 
 Toleration Act passed. More than 100 Friends' Meetings 
 licensed in West Riding soon after this. Most of 
 them private dwelUng-houses ... 1689 
 
 Death of George Fox, 13th January (i.e. 11 mo. 1690 O.S.). 
 
 About 60,000 Quakers in existence - - 1691 
 
 Friends' Affirmation Bill passed ... - 1696 
 
 Friends known to be resident in 464 towns and villages in 
 
 Yorkshire about this time . . - - 1700 
 
 Simplification of Friends' form of Affirmation legalised - 1722 
 
 Elders appointed ..---- 1727 
 
 Membership with Friends defined by Minute of Yearly 
 
 Meeting ...--- 1738 
 
 Rise of Methodism ..... 1739 
 
 Calendar amended. New Year's Day, January \st instead 
 of March 2$th. January becomes the " first month " 
 with corresponding changes throughout - - 1752 
 
 John Woolman dies at York ; growing interest in anti- 
 Slavery Movement ----- 1772 
 Recording of Ministers ; Early Minute - - - i773 
 Declaration of American Independence - - - 1776 
 Establishment of Ackworth School ; Dr. John FothergUl 1779 
 Sunday Schools begun by Raikes - - - - 1780 
 "BookofDiscipUne" first printed - - - 1783 
 
 (Revised editions in 1802, 1834, 1861, 1883, 1906). 
 Establishment of the Women's Yearly Meeting - - 1784 
 
 Opening of York Retreat - - - - '796 
 
436 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 Boys' School begun in Yorkshire Quarterly Meeting 
 premises in Lawrence Street, York, by William 
 
 Simpson ------ 1823 
 
 Roman Catholic Emancipation Act - - - 1826 
 
 Hicksite Secession in America - - - - 1827 
 
 Scope of Affirmation enlarged ; Test and Corporation Acts 
 
 repealed - - . . . 1828 
 
 Friends' Provident Institution established - - 1832 
 
 Scope of Affirmation further enlarged. Admission of 
 
 Friends to Parliament - - 1833 
 
 Dissenters' Marriage and General Registration Acts: 
 
 Tithe Commutation. Friends' Education Society 
 
 founded; Beaconite Controversy - - 1836 
 
 Surrender of Friends' Registers to Government ; entries of 
 
 Births, 260,000 ; Marriages, 40,000 ; Burials, 310,000 1840 
 
 Friends' First-day School Association founded - - 1847 
 
 Friends' Foreign Mission Association founded - - 1868 
 
 Abolition of Compulsory Church-rates - - - 1868 
 
 Removal of Religious Tests in Oxford, Cambridge and 
 
 Durham Universities - . - - 1870 
 
 Burial Acts' Amendment Act passed ... 1880 
 
 Richmond (Friends') Conference, U.S.A. - - 1887 
 
 Affirmation Amendment Act passed - - - 1888 
 
 Manchester Conference on Home Missions - - 1895 
 
 Darlington Conference on Foreign Missions - - 1896 
 
 First Summer School (at Scarborough) - . . 1897 
 
 Yearly Meeting in Leeds (the first held in the provinces 
 
 since 1660) ------ 1905 
 
 [The Editor is responsible for the Appendices. The Chronological Table 
 has been compiled mainly from several prepared by John S. Rowntree, 
 and from that contained in J. W. Rowntree's "Essays and Addresses.'"^ 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Note. — Where/ is inserted it denotes that the subject is continued on the 
 following pages. n= footnote. Italics indicate title of paper or book. 
 
 AcKWORTH School, 7, 43, 172, 211, 
 285; 333, 402, 416; history of, 301- 
 325 ; foundation, 302 ; general 
 meeting, 303 ; S. Grubb'sdescription, 
 304 ; spinning naistress, 305 ; com- 
 mittees, 306 ; Vocabulary, 307 ; early 
 fees, 308 ; Wm. Howitt's description, 
 309; the flags, 310; J. J. Gurney's 
 visit, 311; Thos. Harvey's descrip- 
 tion, 312 ; Friends' Educational 
 Society formed, 314 ; Joseph Rown- 
 tree's inquiry, 315 ; first vacation, 
 316; the chalybeate bath, 318; 
 first public examination, 319 ; offi- 
 cers, 321 ; eminent scholars, 322 ; 
 influence, 323 ; failings, 324. See 
 also Fothergill. 
 
 Act of Uniformity, 127. 
 
 Adult Schools, 12, 27,47, 48«. 52, 96, 
 i73» 239, 264, 284. 
 
 Afl[irmations, 199, 202, 225. 
 
 Alexander, William, 329, 342, 417. 
 
 Algol star, 46. 
 
 Allen, William, 211/, 236, 408. 
 
 Allen, Richard, 354- 
 
 Alleine, Joseph, 278. 
 
 AlUs, Thomas, 339, 342. 
 
 Almery Garth, 366, 373. 
 
 American Colonies, 137/. 
 
 Andrews, Frederick and A.M., 320. 
 
 Anglicanism, no, 291, 295. 
 
 Annual Monitor, 417. 
 
 Appleby Gaol, 123. 
 
 Arch, Robert, 153«. 
 
 Ardsley, 123W. 
 
 Ariss, Robert, 153. 
 
 Arnold, Dr., 334. 
 
 Atkinson, James, 368. 
 
 Authority, Church, 156. 
 
 Backhouse, James, 329, 342, 418. 
 
 Baines, Henry, 339. 
 
 Baker, John Gilbert, 363. 
 
 Balby, 123. 
 
 Baltimore, Lord, 138. 
 
 Bancroft, historian, quoted, 63, 104, 
 
 140, 183, 224. 
 Baptists, III, 113, 114, 118, 135, 159, 
 
 198, 205, 388. 
 Barber, Mrs., 378. 
 Barclay, Robert, the Apologist, 129, 
 
 i32». 133. 135. 140, 153, 156. 157. 
 
 162, 167, 181, 185, 243, 282. 
 Barclay, Robert, author of I'tiner Life^ 
 
 etc., quoted, iii, 118, 145, 167, 198, 
 
 388. 
 Baxter, Richard, 105, 131, 134, 278. 
 Beacon, the, 411. 
 Beating, Benjamin, 270M. 
 Beckwith, Dr., 376. 
 Begging, 120. 
 Behmen, Jacob, 109, 118. 
 Bennet, Jervase, 117, 178M. 
 Berry, Dr., 64. 
 Besse, Joseph, 129. 
 Bewley, Joseph H., 337. 
 Bible, Authorised version, 186. 
 Binns, Dr. Jonathan, 306/. 
 Binns, Thomas, 328. 
 Birthright membership, 1 5, 346/. 
 Birmingham and Friends, 226. 
 Birkbeck, Wilson, 308. 
 Bland, Richard, i30». 
 Blaxland, George, 402. 
 Boley Hill School (Rochester), 328. 
 Boocock, George, 335. 
 Booth, William and Catherine, 139. 
 Bottomley, George, 321. 
 Bowater, John, 130. 
 
 437 
 
 30 
 
438 
 
 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE, 
 
 Bowles, Oliver, 390. 
 
 Bowles, Edward (" Priest Bowles "), 
 386-400 ; birthplace, 390 ; haran- 
 gues troops at Bridgwater, 391 ; 
 portrait, 392 ; sermon on swearing, 
 393 ; and Episcopal Church, 395 ; 
 Plain and Short Catechism, 396/; 
 summary of character, 399/. 
 
 Bownas, Samuel, 243, 252, 271. 
 
 Brady, Henry, 310, 313. 
 
 Braithwaite, Joseph Bevan, 4i4n. 
 
 Brawling in Churches, 1 16, 387/. 
 
 Brayshaw, Alfred Neave, 61. 
 
 Bright, John, 12, 35, 69, 217, 322. 
 
 Brighouse, 60 ; ministerial visits, 263. 
 
 Bristol, ministerial visits to, 263. 
 
 British and Foreign School Society, 
 236. 
 
 British Association at York, 45. 
 
 Brougham, penry, 367. 
 
 Brown, Isaac, 31, 318. 
 
 Brown, Joseph, 308. 
 
 Browning, Robert, quoted, 83. 
 
 Brownrig, Dr., 390. 
 
 Bugg, Francis, 164. 
 
 BuU and Mouth Meeting, 266. 
 
 Bunyan, John, 104, 108, 278, 388. 
 
 Burial grounds, 124, 222. 
 
 Burnet, 131, 205. 
 
 Burrough, Edward, 122, 198 ; on the 
 ministry, 248/ ; 262, 266, 388. 
 
 Burton's Diary, 126. 
 
 Butler, Samuel, 194, 196, 390. 
 
 Buxton, Sir T. Fowell, 9, 210. 
 
 Calvert, Thomas, 391. 
 
 Calvin, 146. 
 
 Capital punishment, 120. 
 
 Cappe, Dr., 407. 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, quoted, 103. 
 
 Cash, Newman, 329. 
 
 Cash, John W., 339. 
 
 Casson, John, 329 
 
 Censorship of MSS., 265. 
 
 Central Education Board, 335. 
 
 Conditions of Congregational Growth, 
 
 278-298. 
 Congregational worship, 169. 
 Chalkley, G., 267. 
 Channing, William EUery, 367, 
 Cheke, Sir John, 387. 
 Children of Light, 134, i43«, 161, 178, 
 
 182. 
 Children maintain meetings, 129. 
 Chinn, artist, i2Sn. 
 Church Government, 145/, 282, 288. 
 Church Rates, 13, 115. 
 
 Clark, J. Edmund, 340, 380. 
 
 Qarkson, Thomas, 13. 
 
 Cocoa Works, York, 49. 
 
 Coillard, missionary, 26. 
 
 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, quoted, 103. 
 
 Colet, 112, 118, 119, 120, 301. 
 
 Conscience, supremacy of, 133. 
 
 Conventicle Acts, 129, 132. 
 
 Crewdson, Isaac, 411. 
 
 Crisp, Stephen, 88, 135, 151/, 185 
 on the Ministry, 249, 281. 
 
 Croese, Gerard, io6n, 128M. 
 
 Cromwell, Oliver, 125, 126; and the 
 Seekers, 148; 178; and G. Fox, 
 125, 178; and religious persecution, 
 204 ; at York, 326 ; on Puri- 
 tanism, 289. 
 
 Cromwell, Richard, 12;. 
 
 Crosby Hall, 2o6». 
 
 Curteis, Canon, quoted, 184, 210. 
 
 Curtis, Robert, 267. 
 
 Dalton, Dr., 321, 
 
 Darlington Conference on Foreign 
 Missions, 62. 
 
 Davies, Dr., 378. 
 
 Davies, Robert, 391. 
 
 Davis, William, 319. 
 
 Davis, Abram G., 339. 
 
 Derby Gaol, 121. 
 
 Devonshire House, 266«. 
 
 Dewsbury, William, 123, 250. 
 
 Disciplinary Meetings, 86, 135, 149/, 
 157, 164/, 232/, 241, 251 ; dis- 
 continuance of, 252. See also 
 Women's Meetings. 
 
 Divine Immanence, Wm. Penn's 
 views, 185. See Inward Light. 
 
 Dixon, Hepworth, i33«. 
 
 Dolphin Inn, 266n. 
 
 Doncaster, Phebe, i. 
 
 Doncaster, Helen (Mrs. J. S. Rown- 
 tree), 43. 
 
 Drawwell Conference, 169. 
 
 Drury, Captain, 125. 
 
 Dryden, quoted, 194. 
 
 Dumbleton, Mary, 310. 
 
 Dundas, Thomas (Earl of Zetland), 
 404. 
 
 Dyer, Mary, 137, 353. 
 
 Dymond, Joseph John, 174, 243, 260. 
 
 ECCLESTON, ThEODOR, 269. 
 
 Echard, 185. 
 Ecroyd, Benjamin, 412. 
 Edification, 285/, 288. 
 Edmonton, 123. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 439 
 
 Education, in Society of Friends, i8/, 
 13s. 149. 154. 171. 172. 227, 229, 
 235/; aim of, 238, 28s, 301 ; S. 
 Tuke and, 214/. ■ See also Ackworth, 
 Rawdon, York, Leighton Park. 
 
 Education Bill, 1902, 73/. 
 
 Educational policy of Friends, 75, 
 343-358 ; grievances in Yorkshire, 
 209 ; and national life, 234-242 ; 
 Friends' Educational Society formed 
 314 ; Old Scholars' Associations, 
 343 ; character of, 344 ; Yearly 
 Meeting query, 1875, and Central 
 Education Board, 345 ; statistics 
 346/ ; responsibility of Yearly Meet- 
 ing, 348 ; scheme of 1892, 349 ; 
 endowment fund, 351 ; Christian 
 influence of, 353 ; summary of 
 suggestions, 354/ ; relations of 
 Society to children of members, 
 356/. 
 
 Edwards's Gangraena, 186. 
 
 Elizabeth, Princess, 137. 
 
 Ellis, Henry, 339. 
 
 Ellis, Sarah (nie Stickney), 322. 
 
 Ellis, Mrs. John Edward, 66n. 
 
 Ellwood, Thomas, 128, 130, 135, 139, 
 144/, 150, 162/, 165, 168. 
 
 Endicott, Governor, 127. 
 
 Erasmus, 119M. 
 
 Etty, William, R.A., 377, 381. 
 
 Evans, Josiah and Mary H., 320. 
 
 Fairfax, Lord and Lady (nie Vera), 
 
 391/. 396/. 
 Fairfax, Mary, 397. 
 Falmouth Friends, 72. 
 Farnsworth, Richard, 123, 159. 
 Fanaticism among Friends, 192. See 
 
 also Nayler, J. 
 FeU, Thomas, 121. 
 Fell, Margaret (afterwards Fox), 121, 
 
 127, 128, 155, 182, 211, 250. 
 Fifth Monarchy Men, 127. 
 First-day Schools, 53/, 173, 212, 254, 
 
 264. See also Adult Schools. 
 First Publishers of Truth, 388. 
 Fisher, Mary, 255. 
 Fitch, J. G., 319, 338. 
 Fletcher, Elizabeth, 190. 
 Flounders, Benjamin, 22, 318. 
 Flounders Institute, 336. 
 Ford, John, 4, 5, 314, 328, 332; 
 
 marriage, 330, 333; influenced by 
 
 Dr. Arnold, 334; 337/, 340, 341- 
 Ford, Rachel (m^« Robson), 333, 337. 
 Foreign Missions, 52, 62, 173, 254/, 
 
 286/. 
 
 Forms of speech, 113, 114, 196/. 
 
 Forster, William, 25 3«. 
 
 Forster, William E., appreciation of 
 by Gladstone, 207 ; Ireland, 405 
 
 Forster, Robert, 236. 
 
 Fothergill, Dr., and Ackworth School, 
 172, 211, 285, 288, 301/, 324. 
 
 Fowler, Dr., 407. 
 
 Fox George, Macaulay's caricature 
 of, 27, 139, 167, 427/ ; at Brighouse, 
 60 ; Life and Character of, 103-141 ; 
 appreciation by Carlyle and Coler- 
 idge, 103 ; birth, 104 ; unsatisfied 
 by religiousness of his day, 105 ; 
 spiritual conflict, 106 ; crisis, 107 ; 
 " openings," 109 ; his central doc- 
 trine, no; and other mystics, 
 III ; the " inward light," 112, 182/ ; 
 language, rites and forms, 113-115, 
 196; place of woman, 115; and 
 music, 115 ; on war, slavery, etc., 
 lis; speaks in church, 116, 387/; 
 imprisonments at Nottingham, 116, 
 at Derby, 117, at Carlisle and 
 Launceston, 126, Lancaster and 
 Leicester, 127 ; no wish to found 
 new sect, 117; sentiments on 
 social questions, 118 ; comparison 
 with More' s Utopia, 1 18-120; at 
 Swarthmore Hall, 121/; and mar- 
 riage ceremony, 124 ; interview 
 with Cromwell, 125, 1,78 ; self- 
 sacrifice, 126 ; at Holker Hall, 
 127 ; personal appearance, marriage, 
 128, 15s ; imprisoned in Worcester 
 gaol, 129 ; system of church gov- 
 ernment, 13s; in Germany, 136; 
 in West Indies and American 
 Colonies, 137, 182 ; as a writer, 139 ; 
 death, 140 ; on Women's meetings, 
 142/ ; on the Scriptures, 147 ; 
 Canons and Institutions, 151; place 
 of singing, 153 ; ecclesiastical 
 statesmanship, 166 ; power in 
 prayer, 181 ; imprisoned for re- 
 fusing to swear, 200 ; Huxley's 
 testimony, 207; on reform, 211; 
 testimony against war, 214 ; 
 Bishop Westcott's testimony, 214 ; 
 preparation for ministry, 248; on 
 riches, 250 ; stirs up ministry, 262 ; 
 on keeping meetings quiet, 269 
 on individuality and association, 
 281 ; spiritual perception of, 288 ; 
 at York Minster, 326 ; at Beverley, 
 386 ; and " Priest Bowles " 387/ ; 
 Discernment of spirits, 388. See 
 Fell, Margaret. 
 
440 
 
 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 Fox, Dr. Fortescue, 66. 
 
 Free Church Federation, 64. 
 
 Friends. See Society of Friends. 
 
 Friend character, 231/. 
 
 Friends' Central Education Committee, 
 
 75- 
 
 Friends' Educational Society, 239, 314, 
 333. 416. 
 
 Friends' Historical Society, 88, 122. 
 
 Friends' Provident Institution, 76, 
 412/. 
 
 Friends' Foreign Mission Association, 
 173. 255. 
 
 Friends' Quarterly Examiner, Sym- 
 posium on Ministry, 244, 254, 256. 
 
 Fry, Elizabeth, 139, 211/. 
 
 Fry, Joan M., 71. 
 
 Fryer, John F. and Isabella C, 337, 
 338, 340. 
 
 Funerals, arrangement of, 267. 
 
 Gardiner, historian, quoted, 204M. 
 Gates, Barton and Ann, 303. 
 General Meeting, 151. 
 Gibson, William, 270». 
 Gillett, George, 57. 
 Gillett, Hannah E., 92. 
 Gillman, Frederick J., 27«. 
 Gladstone, W. E., and Social Forces, 
 
 224. 
 Goodricke, John, 46M. 
 Gospel Ministry, 56. 
 Gough, quoted, 145. 
 Green, J. Eichard, quoted, 131. 
 Grellet, Stephen, 25 3«. 
 Griffith, John, 173. 
 Grove House School (Tottenham), 
 
 328. 
 Grubb, Sarah, 303/, 323, 401. 
 Gurney, Joseph J., 50, 122, 233, 311/, 
 
 319. 404- 
 Gurney, Samuel, 308, 326. 
 Guyon, Madame, 185. 
 
 Hack, Priscilla. See Tuke. 
 
 Hack, James, 403. 
 
 Hacker, Colonel, 125. 
 
 Hallam, quoted, 131. 
 
 Hambletons, The, 363. 
 
 Hancock, Dr., 183, 401. 
 
 Harcourt, Wm. Vernon, 368, 381. 
 
 Harding, William, 329. 
 
 Hargraves, «■ Old," 335. 
 
 Harrison, Lucy, reminiscences of 
 
 J. S. R., 20. 
 Hartley, Leonard L., 392. 
 Harvey, Thomas, 312, 318. 
 
 Harwood, John, 157/. 
 
 Hewley, Sir John and Lady Sarah 
 
 {nie Woolrich), 397. 
 Hey, Archdeacon, 368. 
 Hill, John and Judith, 302. 
 Hipsley, John and John, jun., 307, 
 
 308, 310, 329, 342, 412, 416. 
 Hipsley, Henry, 329. 
 Hitchin, school at, 402. 
 Hodgkin, Jonathan B., and J. S. R., 67. 
 Hodgkin, Dr. Thomas, 69, 93, 382. 
 Hodges, Henry, 199. 
 Holker Hall, 127. 
 Holland, Canon Scott, 92. 
 Hookes, Ellis, 159, 266, 269. 
 Hope, Thomas H., 339. 
 Hotham, Elizabeth, 10. See Rown- 
 
 tree, Mrs. J. S. 
 Hotham, Justice, 386. 
 Howard, Luke, 329. 
 Howard, John, 211. 
 Howgill, Francis, 122, 150, 159, 198, 
 
 248, 262, 266, 388. 
 Howitt, WUliam, 305, 309/, 322. 
 Howitt, Mary, 223. 
 Hoyland, Elizabeth, 401. 
 Hoyland, Chas., 252. 
 Hubberthome, Richard, 388. 
 Hustler, John, 329, 413. 
 Hutton, Matthew, 391. 
 Huxley, Prof, and Geo. Fox, 207. 
 Hymans, Thomas, 197. 
 
 Imprisonments of Friends, 125, 129, 
 
 130, 149, 206, 207 ; visits by Women 
 
 Friends, 131. 
 Individual and social conduct, 113. 
 Individual liberty, 145/, 156. 
 Ingram, Sir Arthur, 365. 
 Ingram, William, 13014. 
 Inner Life of the Religious Societies of 
 
 the Commonwealth, quoted from. 
 
 See Barclay, Robert. 
 Integrity in trade, 191. 
 Inward Light, no, in, 112, 115, 123, 
 
 126, 140, 147, 180, 182/. 
 
 Jepson, George, 407. 
 Johnstone, Sir John, 335. 
 Jones, Dr. Rufus M., 69. 
 Jowitt, Robert Crewdson, 339. 
 Jucundus, Brother, 370. 
 Justices fined, 133. 
 
 Keith, George, 55, 136. 
 Kempis, Thomas 4, 185. 
 Kidd, " Mother," 335. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 441 
 
 Kingdom of Christ, 291. 
 King, John, 339. 
 Kirbymoorside, 55. 
 Knox, John, 155. 
 
 Lamb, Charles, quoted, 135, 195. 
 
 Lancaster, Joseph, 236. 
 
 Land, Ann, 342. 
 
 Latey, Gilbert, 130. 
 
 Laycock, Dr., 378. 
 
 Launceston, G. Fox at, 126. 
 
 Lawyers, 156. 
 
 Leavens, Elizabeth, 190. 
 
 Leighton Park School, 237. 
 
 Lely, Sir Peter, I28». 
 
 Leslie, Charles, 209, 271. 
 
 LeTall, Benjamin B., 337«. 
 
 Lichfield, G. Fox at, 1 10. 
 
 Lightfoot, Dr., 291. 
 
 Linney, George F., 319. 
 
 Longfellow, H. W., 195. 
 
 Long Parliament, 105, 109. 
 
 Lowell, J. Russell, 46. 
 
 Loyola, Ignatius, Ty. 
 
 Lubbock, Sir John (Lord Avebury), 
 
 45- 
 Luther, Martin, 108, no, 112, 146, 
 
 185, 187. 
 Lyne, Colonel, 182. 
 Lyon, John, 301. 
 
 Macaulay, T. B., caricature of George 
 Fox, 27, 109, no, 139, 167, 183, 
 427/; 104,113,125; on principles 
 of liberty, 204, 222. 
 
 Mackennal, Dr., 92. 
 
 Mackintosh, Sir James, quoted, 126. 
 
 Maddocks, Sarah, 321. 
 
 Magazines, Monthly, 297. 
 
 Mai ton, 123. 
 
 Maltby, Jane, 342. 
 
 Manchester Conference, 57, 278. 
 
 Manchester Conference, The Problem 
 before, 58, 278-298. 
 
 Mans, Edward, 267. 
 
 Marriage procedure. Friends', 1 1 1, 124, 
 149, 170, 192, 267. 
 
 Marsden, quoted, no, 210. 
 
 Marvell, Andrew, 397. 
 
 Masson, Prof., on the early Friends, 
 205. 
 
 Maud, Esther (afterwards Tuke), 
 
 401. 
 Maud, Timothy, 407- 
 Maud, William, 412. 
 Maurice, Frederick D., 82, 213. 
 
 Meade, Wm., trial of, 133. 
 
 Meeting-houses, pulled down, 129; 
 size and location of, 297. 
 
 Meetings, visitation of, 59. 
 
 Meetings for Discipline. See Dis- 
 ciplinary Meetings. 
 
 Meeting for Sufferings, 129, 149. 
 
 Membership in the Society of Friends, 
 
 15- 
 
 Membership, birthright, 15, 346/. 
 
 Methodists, 279. 
 
 Methodism, Rise of 243 ; and Quaker- 
 ism, 141, 187. 
 
 Meuron, Chas. C. de, 336. 
 
 Micah's Mother, 142-176. 
 
 Miller, William Allen, 322. 
 
 Milton, John, 108, 186 ; on oaths, 
 201. 
 
 Ministry, Christian, 115, 175. 243-261 ; 
 distribution of, 149, 150, i57. i73/. 
 250, 266/; travelling, 15 5. 262 j 
 sustenation of, 161 ; " separated," 
 175 ; women's, 190 ; Work and 
 Maintenance of, 262-277 ; influence 
 on growth and decline of Friends, 
 265 ; supply of country meetings, 
 267 ; caution to women preachers, 
 270; Monthly Meetings and, 270. 
 See also Burrough, E., Crisp, S. 
 and EUwood, T. 
 
 Ministers, recording of, 174, 222, 252/, 
 269, 296 ; return of deaths of, 252 ; 
 scarcity of, 252/, 276; exchanges, 
 266 ; forbidden to speak, 270 ; 
 expenses of, 274. 
 
 Ministry and Oversight Meetings, 259, 
 262n. 
 
 Missionary Helpers' Union, 255. 
 
 Missionary work, 173. 
 
 Moline, Sparkes, 308. 
 
 Molinos, 185. 
 
 Monasticism, 233. 
 
 Monk, General, 394/. 
 
 Moore, Edwin, 331. 
 
 More, Sir Thomas, iiz, 118, 120, 132, 
 133, 204. 
 
 Morning Meeting, 1 50, 1 58, 267/. 
 
 Morning Books, First-day, 267/. 
 
 Mucklow, William, 152. 
 
 Muggleton, Ludowick, 109. 
 
 Munby, Giles, 339. 
 
 Munro, Margaret, 27on. 
 
 Murray, Lindley, 307, 340, 401, 406. 
 
 Music, G. Fox and, n4. 
 
 Nayler, James, 123, 124, 149, 178, 
 
 192. 
 Negro Slavery, 116, 137. 
 
442 
 
 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 Newby, John, 313. 
 New England Persecution, 127, 137, 
 207. 
 
 Oaths, Friends' testimony against, 
 64, 114, 127, 190, 195, 198, 201/; 
 Yearly Meeting and, 302 ; laxity 
 of Friends concerning, 207. 
 
 " Openings of Truth," 109. 
 
 Oxford, 190. 
 
 Papal system, 147. 
 
 Parnell, James, 135M, 388. 
 
 Pascal, 185. 
 
 Passive Resistance, 205. 
 
 Pastoral System in America, 254. 
 
 Pease, Edward, 322. 
 
 Pease, John, 409. 
 
 Pease, Joseph, 225, 322, 336. 
 
 Pendarves, John, 159. 
 
 Penington, Isaac, 181, 417. 
 
 Pennsylvania, 138 ; influence of, 224. 
 
 Penn, William, I32«, 135, 152, 167, 
 212, 267, 268 ; describes George 
 Fox, 129; trial, 133, 149; and 
 Pennsylvania, 138 ; and Wm. 
 Rogers, 144/ ; Spiritual Liberty, 1 59, 
 169 ; and the Separatists, 163 ; 
 on the Divine Immanence, 185 ; 
 and distribution of ministers, 271 ; 
 Primitive Christianity Revived, 276, 
 291, 354 ; on good government, 294. 
 
 Penney, Norman, preface. 
 
 Pepys, Thomas, 132. 
 
 Perrot, John, 150/, 193. 
 
 Perrott, Mr., 392. 
 
 Pettie, J., R.A., 127. 
 
 Philanthropy of Friends, 209/. 
 
 Phillips, Prof. John, 363, 374, 381. 
 
 Pickering, Mr., 118. 
 
 Pickering, Henry, 339. 
 
 Pirn, Jonathan, 40;. 
 
 Plumby, Sarah, 270. 
 
 Pocklington, 123. 
 
 Pool, Matthew, 393. 
 
 Preachers, itinerant, 122. 
 
 Presbyterians and religious liberty, 
 204/ ; and Unitarianism, 398. 
 
 Preston Patrick Separatists, I22«. 
 
 Priestman, David, 342. 
 
 Priestman, John, 342. 
 
 Priestman, Samuel, 342. 
 
 Principles and Methods, relationship 
 between, 289. 
 
 Prison discipline, 117. 
 
 Priests, G. Fox and, 120. 
 
 Public Friends, 250/, 265, 271/. 
 
 Public Prayer, 150/, 170. 
 
 Pumphrey, Thomas and Rachel, 314. 
 
 316, 319. 
 Puritanism, 105, no, 125, 179, 194, 
 
 217, 222 ; 389, 432. 
 
 Quaker, use of term, 13/, 117; ori- 
 gin, 178W. 
 
 Quakers. See Society of Friends. 
 
 Quakerism Past and Present, 10, 95, 
 425. 
 
 Raine, Canon, 396«. 
 
 Ramsey, Professor, 69. 
 
 Ranters, 135, 148, 151, 154, 165, 168, 
 174, 245. 
 
 Rawdon School, 416. 
 
 Rawlinson, Colonel, 127. 
 
 Red Indians, 137. 
 
 Registration, Friends' system of, 74, 
 75, 124, 148, 222, 226. 
 
 Relations of Denominational to National 
 Life, 62. 
 
 Religious Toleration, 131/. 
 
 Retired Meetings, 293. 
 
 Rhode Island, 137. 
 
 Richard, Henry, 390. 
 
 Richardson, George, 173. 
 
 Richardson, William, 200. 
 
 Richardsons of Cleveland, 223. 
 
 Richardson, Hannah, 321. 
 
 Richardson, Thomas, 339. 
 
 Rigg, Ambrose, 271. 
 
 Rive, Dr. de la, 408. 
 
 Robertson, Thomas, i3on. 
 
 Robson, Hilda M. (nee Rowntree), 89. 
 
 Robson, Isaac, 44. 
 
 Robson, Mrs. J. W., 66«. 
 
 Robinson, Sarah, 337. 
 
 Robinson, William, 337. 
 
 Rogers, William, 142/, 154, 161/, 168, 
 173, 276. 
 
 Romanus, John, 371. 
 
 Rowntree, John Stephenson, Memoir, 
 1-94; schooldays, 4 ; enters business, 
 5 ; religious activities, 8 ; writes 
 essay on Quakerism Past and Present, 
 10/ ; attitude towards birthright 
 membership, 1 5 ; letter to William 
 Thistlethwaite, 16 ; accepts secre- 
 taryship of York Friends' School, 
 17; educational work, 18/, 75, 98; 
 sympathy of, 24/, 32, 36, 79 ; call 
 to the ministry, 24 ; views on 
 divine guidance, 26, 83 ; Adult 
 
INDEX. 
 
 443 
 
 School teacher, 27, 96 ; relations 
 with employees, 30 ; travels in the 
 ministry, 32, 60, 99 ; home life, 
 32/, 76, 85 ; characteristics of 
 ministry, 36/, 67 ; editorship of 
 The Friend, 42 ; marriage with 
 Helen Doncaster, 43 ; Lord Mayor 
 of York, 44/, 97 ; British Asso- 
 ciation Meeting, 45/ ; chairman of 
 Finance Committee, 48 ; death of 
 eldest son, 48 ; political interests, 
 49 ; importance of ministry, 50/ ; 
 the search for truth, 51 ; ad^ess 
 on Adult Schools and Foreign 
 Missions, 53/ ; influence on " for- 
 ward movement," among Friends, 
 57 ; lectures at Oxford, 57 ; at 
 Manchester Conference, 58 ; Dar- 
 lington Conference, 62 ; illness, 62 ; 
 at Scarborough Summer School, 
 62 ; Free Church Council, 64 ; 
 his correspondence, 65 ; favourite 
 text, 68 ; influence of Whittier's 
 poetry, 68 ; range of reading, 69 ; 
 attitude to South African War, 70 ; 
 his " booklet," 71 ; death of his 
 son, James Edward, 72 ; the Edu- 
 cation Bill, 1902, 72 ; generosity, 
 76 ; sense of order, yy, 81 ; as a 
 conversationalist, 78 ; sense of res- 
 ponsibility, 78 ; humour, 80 ; as 
 a companion, 82 ; racy stories, 84 ; 
 at Ministry Conference, 85 ; illness, 
 90 ; journey to London, 92 ; death, 
 93 ; influence of his life, 93, 94 ; 
 testimony of Yorkshire Quarterly 
 Meeting, 95 ; vocal ministry, 98. 
 
 Rowntree, Arthur and Ellen H., 337, 
 338m- 
 
 Rowntree, Elizabeth, nie Hotham 
 (wife of J. S. R.), 10, 32, 43 ; death 
 
 of. 34- 
 Rowntree, Helen, nie Doncaster, 
 
 (wife of J. S. R.), 42, 85. 
 Rowntree, Henry Isaac (brother of 
 
 J. S. R.). 49- 
 Rowntree, James Edward (son of 
 
 J. S. R.), 71- 
 Rowntree, John /uncle of J. S. R.), 8, 
 
 66«, 329. 
 Rowntree, John Wilhelm, 11, 59, 86, 
 
 89. 
 Rowntree, Joseph (father of J. S. R.), 
 
 I, 6/, II ; death of, 17/, 95 ; 315, 329, 
 
 333. 
 Rowntree, Joseph (brother of J. S. R.), 
 
 66. 
 Rowntree, Joshua, 29, 42, 66». 
 
 Rowntree, Sarah, nie Stephenson 
 (mother of J. S. R.), i, 4. 9- 31/. 
 34- 
 
 Rowntree, Sarah (sister of J. S. R.), 4- 
 
 Sabbath, The, 1 1 1 . 
 
 Sacerdotalism, 123, 295. 
 
 Sadler, Prof. Micha,el E., 57. 
 
 Salmond, William, 368. 
 
 Salt, William, iji. 
 
 Satterthwaite, George and Rachel, 
 
 319. 320- 
 Scarborough, Friends in, 227. 
 Scarborough Summer School, 6z, 69, 
 
 I77n, 189. 
 Scholes, 60. 
 
 Scriptures, G. Fox on the, 113. 
 Scott, Fa villa, 401. 
 Seekers, 135, 148, 165. 
 Seebohm, Frederic, 9, 69 ; quoted, 
 
 II2M, 120. 
 Seebohm, Benjamin, ministry of, 253 ; 
 
 342. 
 Separatists, Swaledale, I22ti; 135, 
 
 145/, 164, 251. 
 Settle, last Monthly Meeting, 10. 
 Sewel, William, 145/, 165. 
 Shaking hands, 171. 
 Sharp, Isaac, 65, 75«. 
 Sheriff, Lawrence, 301. 
 Sibbs, Dr., 390. 
 
 Simpson, William, 328, 331, 335. 
 Singing, congregational, 152/, 171, 
 
 293- 
 
 Silence of Scripture, The, 89. 
 
 Silence in worship, 121. 
 
 Six Weeks Meeting, 274. 
 
 Sixty preachers, 122. 
 
 Smith, Till Adam, 334, 337. 
 
 Smith, Sydney, 216, 408. 
 
 Smith, Dr. George Adam, 69. 
 
 Smith, Edward, 342. 
 
 Social Reform, G. Fox and wages, 118; 
 the poor, 120 ; out of employ, 120 ; 
 integrity in trade, 191. 
 
 Society of Friends, Gospel Ministry in, 
 243-261 ; preparation for, 248 ; 
 "thrashing" meetings, 249, 251; 
 Public Friends, 250/, 257, 262/ ; 
 itinerancy, 252/, 257, 262/ ; York 
 Conference, 253, 258 ; pastoral 
 system in America, 254 ; present 
 day usage, 255/; and Primitive 
 Christians, 256 ; and Methodists, 
 257 ; necessity of and conditions 
 of success, 258/ ; Ministry and 
 Oversight, 259. 
 
444 
 
 JOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE 
 
 Society of Friends, [Continue^ 
 Accused of being Jesuits, 278. 
 Bible Society, 210. 
 Birthright membership, 15, 346/. 
 Capital punishment, 120. 
 Care of the insane, 211. 
 Central doctrine, no. See Inward 
 
 Light. 
 Children maintain meetings, 129. 
 Compared with Oxford Reformer. 
 
 See Colet, Erasmus, More. 
 Corn Laws, 225. 
 Decline of, 8, 10/, 42, 93, 216, 222, 
 
 425-427. 
 Denominational and national life, 
 
 221-242. 
 Disownments in, 11, 282, 315. 
 Ecclesiastical policy and worship, 
 
 114/, 221/, 232/. 
 From the Anglican point of view, 
 
 210, 213, 214. 
 Growth of, 136, 179, 192, 207, 279, 
 
 425-427. 
 Ignorance concerning, 278, 283. 
 Influence in Religious Life of 
 
 England, 218. 
 Influence of environment, 223/. 
 Influence of Puritanism, in. 
 International peace, 214. 
 Its Faith and Practice, 71, 430. 
 Marriage procedure, iii, 124, 149, 
 
 192, 222/. 
 Money making, 213, 250, 281. 
 Native races, 216. 
 Number in seventeenth century, 
 
 179. 
 Pamphlets and literature, 156. 
 Passive resistance in, 205. 
 Philanthropy, 209/. 
 Place in Religious Life of England, 
 
 62, 177-219. 
 Place of woman in, 115, 145/. 
 Position in English Society, 209/. 
 Prison Reform and Social Reform, 
 
 211. 
 Public ofiftces, 226/, 241. 
 Reform movement, 12. 
 Registration, 74, 124, 148/, 222, 
 
 226. 
 Universities, 227, 237. 
 Work and maintenance of vocal 
 
 ministry, 2627277. 
 See also under Children of Light, 
 Church Government, Church 
 Rates, Disciplinary Meetings, 
 Education, Fanaticism, Forms of 
 Speech, Imprisonments, Inward 
 Light, Social Reform, etc. 
 
 Southcote, Joanna, 109. 
 
 Speaking in Churches, 387/. 
 
 Speech. See Forms of Speech. 
 
 Spence, Thomas, 339. 
 
 Spence, Alfred H., 339. 
 
 Spence, Joseph, 342. 
 
 Spiritual Liberty, 159/, 169. 
 
 Squire, Lovell, 339. 
 
 Stanley, Dean, and Friends, 210. 
 
 Stephenson, Isaac, i. 
 
 Stephenson, Sarah. See Rowntree. 
 
 "Steeple-houses," 113. 
 
 Story (and Wilkinson) . See Wilkinson 
 
 and Story Controversy. 
 Strathpeffer, 66, 89. 
 Stretton. Richard, 396. 
 St. Mary's Abbey, York, 372/. 
 Sturge, Jacob P., 263. 
 .Summer Schools, 12, 61, 62. 
 Sufferings of Friends, 130, 175. See 
 
 Imprisonments. 
 Sureties, 131. 
 
 Swaledale Separatists, I22n. 
 Swarthmore Hall, 121, 157. 
 
 Tallack, William, 118. 
 
 Tanner, William, 263. 
 
 Tauler, 118, 185. 
 
 Taylor, Christopher, 123. 
 
 Taylor, Gertrude M. (nee Rowntree), 
 
 92. 
 Taylor, Joseph, 339. 
 Taylor, Isaac, 9, 27. 
 Taylor, Jeremy, 105, 132, 199, 206, 
 Taylor, Thomas, 123. 
 Tennyson, 195 ; on war, 214. 
 Test and Corporation Acts, 225. 
 Thistlethwaite, Wm., 16, 253, 263, 
 
 28on. 
 Thompson, Philip, 347. 
 Thompson, Sir Henry, 54, 397. 
 Thompson, Silvanus P., 334, 337, 
 
 340. 
 Thorpe, Anthony, 368. 
 Thorp, Fielden, and A. J., 337, 338, 
 
 340. 
 Thompson, Richard, 47. 
 Thompson, Miss, 23. 
 " Thrashing " meetings, 249, 293. 
 Thring, Edward, 68. 
 Thurloe, Secretary, 388. 
 Tithes, payment of, 13, 115, 171. 
 Toleration Act, 140, 150, 179, 192, 200, 
 
 207/, 225, 280. 
 Toulmin, 125. 
 Trinity, the, 113. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 445 
 
 Tnke, Samuel, 6, 145, 154, 231, 238, 
 302M, 322/, 327/ ; sketch of life, 
 401-421 ; at Ackworth, 402 ; 
 supports Wilberforce, 403 ; declines 
 to stand for Parliament, 404 ; 
 interest in Ireland, 405 ; the York 
 Retreat, 405-409 ; business life and 
 marriage, 410 ; Clerk of Yearly 
 Meeting, 411 ; Friends' Provident 
 Institution, 412/ ; as minister of 
 gospel, 413; and education, 414/; 
 as author, 416; Annual Monitor, 
 417 ; temperament of, 418 ; death 
 and Bibliographical Note, 420/. 
 
 Tuke, Daniel Hack, 364, 406. 
 
 Tuke, Elizabeth [nie Hoyland), 401. 
 
 Tuke, Esther, 304, 327, 401, 406. 
 
 Tuke, Henry, 327/, 337, 401/, 406. 
 
 Tuke, James Hack, 6, 302, 332, 405. 
 
 Tuke, Maria, 410. 
 
 Tuke, Mary M. {nie Scott), 401, 406. 
 
 Tuke, Priscjlla, wife of Samuel, (nie 
 Hack), 410. 
 
 Tuke, Sarah. See Grubb. 
 
 Tuke, William, 211, 304, 321, 327, 
 329, 401/, 405/, 409. 
 
 UlVERSTON, 121. 
 
 Uncovering of the head, 114, 149/, 
 170. See Public Prayer. 
 
 Vaudois persecution, 126. 
 Vaughton, John, 269. 
 Virginia, 150. 
 
 Waller, William Edward, 337. 
 
 Wallet, Barbara, 330. 
 
 Waller, Robert, 330. 
 
 Waltham Abbey, i23« 
 
 Walton, Thomas, 337. 
 
 War, testimony against, 116, 210, 214. 
 
 Warwick, 123. 
 
 Waterford School, 314. 
 
 Watson, Dr. Robert Spence, 4. 
 
 Wellbeloved, Mr., 369. 
 
 Wesley, John, 273. 
 
 West Indies, 137, 150. 
 
 Westcott, Bishop, 183, 189, 214. 
 
 West, Leonard, 329. 
 
 Weston, Richard L., 328. 
 
 Wheeler, Elizabeth, 402. 
 
 Whitaker, Robert, 304, 308, 311, 314. 
 
 320. 
 Whitaker, Hannah, 314. 
 Whitby, Friends meeting at, 55. 
 White, William, 254. 
 Whitefield, G., 273. 
 Whitehead, George, 130, 13S, i44. 
 
 i52«, i6i«, 164, 271. 
 
 Whiting, quoted, i23m. 
 
 Whittier, J. Greenleaf, 43, 68/, 139, 217, 
 
 221, 367. 
 Wiffeu, Benjamin, B., 322. 
 Wiffen, Jeremiah Holmes, 322. 
 Wilberforce, William, 49, 367, 403. 
 Wilkinson and Story Controversy, 
 
 146/, 153, 156/, 163, 169, 193, 251, 
 
 281. 
 Wakin, W., 367. 
 Williams, Roger, 137, 278. 
 Williams, Dr., 342. 
 Williamson, Mary, 321. 
 Wilson, Rt. Hon. James, 322. 
 Wilson, James, 339. 
 Winn, Sir Rowland, 303. 
 Winstanley, Gerard, 91. 
 Women's Meetings, 142/, 154, 170, 
 
 222. 
 Woodbrooke Settlement, 259. 
 Woolman, John, 139, 304, 366. 
 Wordsworth, W., quoted, 361. 
 Work and Maintenance of the Vocal 
 
 Ministry, The, 262-277. 
 Worship, 121. 
 Wycliffe, John, 105, 198. 
 
 Yeardlby, John, 329. 
 
 Yearly Meeting (Friends'), ecclesias- 
 tical action and human suffering, 
 210 ; and American war of Inde- 
 pendence, 226m ; origin of foun- 
 dation, 251 ; on the ministry, 262 ; 
 and Morning Meeting, 270 ; on 
 expenses of ministers, 275 ; on 
 singing, etc., 294 ; on a separate 
 priesthood, 298 ; on education, 301, 
 344> 355 ; Beacon controversy, 
 411. 
 
 York Adult Schools, 27. 
 
 York Free Church Council, 64. 
 
 York Friends' Conference on the 
 Ministry, 253, 258. 
 
 York Friends' Retreat, 328, 405-409 ; 
 fire at, 409. 
 
 York Friends' Schools, 7, 17/; Bootham 
 Jubilee, 43 ; 90, 98 ; Sketch of 
 History of Boys' School, 326-342 ; 
 foundation, 327 ; first committee, 
 329 ; chronology of Lawrence St. 
 period, 330/; John Ford, 331/; 
 migration to Bootham, 334; old 
 characters at, 335 ; winter vacation 
 allowed, 336 ; The Observer, 337 ; 
 examination, 338 ; J. G. Fitch's 
 report, 339 ; natural history at, 
 339; Samuel Tuke, 415. 
 
 31 
 
446 
 
 TOHN STEPHENSON ROWNTREE. 
 
 York, Outlook from Station Hotel, 
 361-385 ; general survey, 362 ; 
 Hambletons, 363 ; Clifton Ings, 
 364 ; Almery Garth, 366, 373 ; 
 John Woolman, 366 ; William Wil- 
 berforce and Henry Brougham, 367 ; 
 St. Mary's Abbey and Museum, 
 368-372 ; Multangular tower and 
 Roman walls, 369 ; Brother Jucun- 
 dus, 370; Lendal Tower, 371; 
 St. Olave's Church, 373 ; The 
 Hospitium, 375 ; Philosophical So- 
 
 ciety, 376 ; Lendal bridge, 37 ; 
 Cholera burial ground, 378, 383, 
 excavations, 397/ ; the Esplanade 
 382. 
 
 York, Roman baths, 2 ; opening of 
 railway, 3 ; British Association at. 
 44, 45; 156, 211, 227; George 
 Fox at, 386/ ; " Priest Bowles ' at, 
 386-400 ; Presb3rterians at, 198. 
 
 Yorkshire Friends' "Interchange of 
 Visits Committee," 59. 
 
 Yorkshire 1905 Committee, 59.