CORNELL UNIVERSITYj LIBEAT^IES ITUA'Z: M.Y. 14853. lOHN M. OLM LIBRARY DATE DUE ■^llifi-- - ssst ^^^^^f^' "^fWmT -€>f«*T1g mrr 1 CAVLORD rniNTCDINU.S. Cornell University Library E184.F89 J78 The Quakers in the *'"|f,^i5;,f|'J,,||?|j||'|j||Viim^^ 3 1924 032 753 919 olin Cornell University Library The original of tliis 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/details/cu31924032753919 OTHER VOLUMES IN THIS SERIES Edited by RUFUS M. JONES. STUDIES IN MYSTICAL RELIGION (1908). By Rufus M. Jones. BOEHME AND OTHER MYSTICAL INFLUENCES. By Rufus M. Jones. \ln Preparation. THE BEGINNINGS OF QUAKERISM. By William Charles Braithwaite. [/« Press. THE PERIOD OF QUIETISM. By Joan M. Fry. [/« Preparation. to THE QUAKERS IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES UENCES, ; WlUU" [I, Past. 'a. MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited LONDON ■ BOMBAY • CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK • BOSTON ■ CHICAGO ATLANTA ■ SAN FRANCISCO THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO THE QUAKERS IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES BY RUFUS M. JONES, M.A., D.Litt. PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, HAVERFORD COLLEGE, U.S.A. ASSISTED BY ISAAC SHARPLESS, D.Sc. PRESIDENT OF HAVERFORD COLLEGE AND AMELIA M. GUMMERE AUTHOR OF *THE QUAKSE— A STUDY IN COSTUME* MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 191 I V. 2-3, Hi PREFACE The story of the Quaker invasion of the Colonies in the New World has often been told in fragmentary fashion, but no adequate study of the entire Quaker movement in colonial times has yet been made from original sources, free from partisan or sectarian prejudice and in historical perspective. By far the most important history of American Quakerism covering our period is Bowden's History of Friends in America (London, vol. i. 1850, vol. ii. 1854), but it is plainly written from the Quaker point of view and does not furnish a critical investigation of Quakerism and its work in the New World. Thomas's History of the Society of Friends in America (written originally for the American Church History Series, and published separately in 1895) is an excellent piece of work, done in an impartial and historical spirit, though too brief to allow of much detail. Weeks's Southern Quakers and Slavery (Baltimore, 1896) is scholarly and judicial, and is the best work in existence for the section covered. There have been many accounts written from the anti-Quaker point of view, but they are for the most part one-sided and coloured by prejudice, and they are obviously lacking in penetration into the inner meaning of the type of religion which they undertake to present. Bancroft has given considerable space to the Quakers in his History of the United States. His account is sympathetic, but it is largely an abstract treatment of their religious principles rather than a truly historical picture. vi QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES This volume is an attempt to study historically and critically the religious movement inaugurated in the New World by the Quakers, a movement important both for the history of the development of religion and for the history of the American Colonies, and to present it not only in its external setting but also in the light of its inner meaning. It has been written as a contribution toward the completion of a plan to write a full history of the Quaker movement on the two continents, conceived by my beloved friend, John Wilhelm Rowntree, and interrupted by his death. No one can now accomplish precisely what he was conceiving — Ah ! who shall lift the wand of magic-power And the lost clew regain ? But a group of his friends have resolved that, as far as possible, his work shall go forward, and we hope that eventually the projected series may be brought to completion. I have been assisted in the present volume by Isaac Sharpless, who has written the section on Pennsylvania, and by Amelia M. Gummere, who has written the section on New Jersey. I have received valuable suggestions and help from William Charles Braithwaite, of Banbury, England ; Norman Penney, of London ; Augustine Jones, of Newton Highlands, Massachusetts ; Professor Allen C. Thomas, of Haverford, Pennsylvania ; and John Cox, jun., of New York City. I have, with permission, made use of the map in Weeks's Southern Quakers and Slavery in locating some of the places on my map of the southern colonies. My wife has read the proofs and prepared the Index, and has in many other ways assisted in my work on this volume. Haverford, Pennsylvania, March 1 9 1 r . CONTENTS PAGE Introduction .... .... xiii BOOK I THE QUAKERS IN NEW ENGLAND CHAPTER I A Pre-Quaker Movement 3 CHAPTER II The Quakers at the Gates 26 CHAPTER III The Founders of New England Quakerism 45 CHAPTER IV The Martyrs 63 CHAPTER V The King's Missive 9° viii QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES CHAPTER VI Later Expansions in New England . • ■ • CHAPTER VII A New Type of Social Religion . . ■ • ■ PAGE III 136 CHAPTER VIII New England Quakers in Politics . • ■ .171 BOOK II QUAKERISM IN THE COLONY OF NEW YORK CHAPTER I The Planting of Quakerism in New York . .215 CHAPTER II New York Quakerism — Its Meetings and Activities 242 BOOK III THE QUAKERS IN THE SOUTHERN COLONIES CHAPTER I The Planting of Quakerism in the Southern Colonies 265 CONTENTS ix CHAPTER II PAGE The Group Life and Work of Southern Friends . 302 CHAPTER III Southern Quakers in Public Life .... 329 BOOK IV THE EARLY QUAKERS IN NEW JERSEY CHAPTER I The Settlement of the Jerseys . . . . -357 CHAPTER II Meetings and Social Life ...... 372 CHAPTER III John Woolman : The Negroes 391 CHAPTER IV John Woolman : The Indians 401 BOOK V THE QUAKERS IN PENNSYLVANIA CHAPTER I The Settlement . . . . • • • -417 X QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES CHAPTER II I'ACE William Penn in Pennsylvania . .423 CHAPTER III Early Days — The Keith Controversy . • 437 CHAPTER IV Government ... 459 CHAPTER V The Friends as Politicians . . . . . -475 CHAPTER VI Friends and the Indians ...... 495 CHAPTER VII Friends and Slavery 509 CHAPTER VIII General Conditions, i 700-1 775 . . . . .522 CHAPTER IX The Friends in the Revolution 556 INDEX . 581 MAPS (Ai end of Volume) I. Map of Quaker Localities in Eastern New York. II. A Map of Quaker Localities in the Southern Colonies. III. A Map of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, 1838. IV. A Map of the Yearly Meeting of Friends for New England, a.d. 1833. "THE WORLD OF THE WORLD" Be of good cheer, brave spirit ; steadfastly Serve that low whisper thou hast served ; for know, God hath a select family of sons Now scattered wide thro' earth and each alone, Who are thy spiritual kindred, and each one, By constant service to that inward law, Is weaving the sublime proportions Of a true monarch's soul. Beauty and strength. The riches of a spotless memory. The eloquence of truth, the wisdom got By searching of a clear and loving eye That seeth as God seeth. These are their gifts. And Time, who keeps God's word, brings on the day To seal the marriage of these minds with thine, Thine everlasting lovers. Ye shall be The salt of all the elements, world of the world. Ralph Waldo Emerson. INTRODUCTION American Quakerism is closely bound up in origin and history with the wider religious movement which had its rise in the English Commonwealth, under the leadership of George Fox.^ This type of religion, which took root in the American Colonies in 1657, and which grew to be a significant and far-reaching influence in at least ten Colonies, had already for ten years been powerfully stirring the middle classes, and had rapidly gathered numbers in the English counties. When the volunteers went forth for " the mighty work in the nations beyond the seas," as they expressed their mission, they were the representatives of an expanding body of believers at home, the executives of a matured policy of spiritual conquest, and they went forth to their " hardships and hazards " with an organised financial support behind them.^ They felt, as their own testimony plainly shows, that they were not solitary adventurers, but that God was pushing them out to be the bearers of a new and mighty word of Life which was to remake the world, and that the whole group behind ' The history of the rise of Quakerism has been written for this series by William Charles Braithwaite in the volume The Beginnings of Quakerism, * At a great General Meeting held at Scalehouse, near Skipton, in England, in 1658, an Epistle was issued which called for funds to push the work in the Western world. The following extract indicates the spirit of the document : " Having heard of the gi-eat things done by the mighty power of God in many nations beyond the seas, whither He hath called forth many of our dear brethren and sisters to preach the everlasting gospel . . . our bowels yearn for them and our hearts are filled with tender love to those precious ones of God who so freely have given up for the Seed's sake their friends, their near relations, their countiy and worldly estates, yea and their lives also. We, therefore, with one consent fireely and liberally offer up our earthly substance, according as God hath blessed every one — to be speedily sent up to London as a freewill offering for the Seed's sake." (The MS. of this Epistle is in the Library at Devonshire House, London, in Portfolio, 16-1.) xiii b xiv QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES them was in some sense embodied in them. Throughout all the years during which the campaign of spiritual conquest was being pushed forward, the entire Society m England was pledged to the task of carrying its " truth " into the life of the New World, and even as early as 1660 George Fox was planning for the founding of a Colony in America, where Quakers could try their faith and work out their ideals unmolested.^ A study of Fox's printed Epistles will convince any one that the " Seed in America " was always prominent in his thought and in his plans.^ In fact no other religious body in the Old World more completely identified itself with the fortunes of its apostles in the New World than did the Quakers, then in the youth and vigour of their career. Throughout the entire period covered by this history — 1656 to 1780 — Quakerism was an expanding force in the Colonies, and there were times within this period when it seemed destined to become one of the foremost religious factors in the life and development of America. It is clearly evident from their own writings that at the opening of the eighteenth century the Quaker leaders expected to make their type of religion prevail on the Western continent. They believed, in fact, that their " Principle " was universally true and would make its way through the race, and that their experiment was only the beginning of a world -religion of the Spirit. The New World seemed to them a providential field to be won for their truth. It was in the New World alone that favour- able opportunities offered in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for the application of Quaker ideals to public life, and the opportunities were quickly seized. In Great Britain there were insuperable bars which kept Quakers out of public service to the state and forced them to adopt a life apart from the main currents. One famous Quaker, John Archdale, who took a prominent part in the making of three American Colonies — Maine, North Carolina and South Carolina — was elected to the English 1 Letter of Josiah Coale to George Fox from Mai-yland, January i66i. A. R. Barclay Col. of MSS. in Devonshire House, No. 53. ' Fox's Efistles (first ed. 1698 ; American ed. 1831, 2 vols.). INTRODUCTION xv Parliament in 1698, but his refusal to take an oath cost him his seat, and ended all attempts on the part of Quakers to enter the field of politics. In America the situation was quite different. In the Puritan Colonies of New England, Quakers were, of course, without the privileges of franchise or office -holding, and in Episco- palian Colonies like Virginia, where uniformity was insisted upon, the way to influence in the government was tightly closed to them ; but in Rhode Island the only obstacle to position in Government affairs which the Quakers met was the difficulty of bearing responsibility for war- preparation. In that Colony for more than a hundred years Quakers were continually in office, and for thirty- six terms the Governorship of the colony was occupied by members of the Society. In Pennsylvania they had one of the largest and most influential Colonies of the New World in their own hands. They came into possession of West Jersey in 1674, and five years later East Jersey also passed into their hands, so that they had the govern- mental control of New Jersey until it became a royal Colony. Until 1 70 1 they were the only organised religious denomination in North Carolina, and the administration of the Quaker, John Archdale, profoundly shaped the history of both Carolinas. Naturally Quakers in the Old World looked to the New as a land of promise, and no pains were spared to spread the " Seed " in the favourable regions along the Atlantic coast, so that by the middle of the eighteenth century there were more Quakers in the Western hemisphere than in Great Britain. They formed half the population of Newport in 1700 and for many years after, and down to the middle of the eighteenth century they were a majority of the popula- tion of the South Narragansett shore of Rhode Island, ^ow Washington County. There were at this period three thousand Quakers in the southern section of Massachusetts, once the territory of the Pilgrim Fathers. About one-third of the inhabitants in the Piscataqua region of Maine and New Hampshire were Quakers. b2 xvi QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES Lynn, Salem, Newbury, and Hampton had large Meetings, and many of the inland rural districts of Massachusetts and Rhode Island were predominantly Quaker. They formed a large proportion of the Long Island towns and the towns of Westchester County on the mainland, and by the middle of the century they constituted an influential body in New York City. There were not less than twenty-five thousand Quakers in Pennsylvania before the end of our period, and probably not far from six thousand in New Jersey. There were by official figures three thousand in Maryland, probably four or five thousand in Virginia, and about the same number in the Carolinas. They were thrifty, pr osperous, and quiet in their modes of life, but contribilting"*'tneir share &t trie hard labour which turned the dense forests into flourishing fields, "^d their share also of those subtler formative forces which prepared the way in the wilderness for a great national life, then hardly dreamed of. It is no doubt a home-spun narrative, but history is no longer aristocratic. It does not confine its purview to selected heroes and purple-tinted events. It has become interested in the common man and in plain every-day happenings, and this story, though modest, is a contribution to the real life of America. The extent of the Quaker influence in the political life of the Colonies has not been generally realised. The " holy experiment " of Penn had striking and dramatic features which have always impressed the imagination, but the quieter work of New England and Carolina Quakers has received much less notice and has waited long for a historian. But while emphasising this neglected field of Quaker activity, we must not lose our perspective and balance. The Quakers' supreme passion was the cultivation of inward religion and an outward life con- sistent with the vision of their souls. " Experiments in government " whether successful or unsuccessful, whether wise or unwise, were never their primary aim. Beneath these ventures, there always existed a deeper purpose — to make a fresh experiment in spiritual religion — as the INTRODUCTION xvii living pulse of all Quaker aspiration, and by this central aim the movement must be finally estimated and judged. These American Quakers of the period here studied believed, with a white-hot intensity, that they had dis- covered, or rediscovered, a new spiritual Principle which they thought was destined to revolutionise life, society, civil government, and religion. The Principle (and they always spelled it with a capital P) which they claimed to have discovered was the presence of a Divine Light in man, a radiance from the central Light of the spiritual universe, penetrating the deeps of every soul, which if responded to, obeyed, and accepted as a guiding star, would lead into all truth and into all kinds of truth. They thought that they had found a way to the direct discovery of the Will of God and that they could thereby put the Kingdom of God into actual operation here in the world. The whole momentous issue of life, they insisted, is settled by personal obedience or disobedience to the inward Divine revelation. The wisdom of the infinite God is within reach of the feeblest human spirit ; the will of the Eternal is voiced in the soul of every man ; it is life to hear and obey ; it is death to follow other voices. This underlying conception forms the spring and motive of all the distinctive activities of the colonial Quakers. They risked everything they had on the truth of this Principle, and they must be judged by the way in which they worked out their experiment in religion. They were champions of causes which seemed new and dangerous to those who heard them, but behind all their propaganda there was one live central faith from which everything radiated — the faith that God speaks directly to the human spirit, and that religion, to be true and genuine, must be a reality of first-hand experience. There have been many individuals in the Christian Church who have been exponents of this mystical idea that God manifests Himself inwardly to the soul of man and that His real presence can be directly, immediately, experienced. The testimony of such mystics has pro- xviii QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES foundly interested our generation and their experiences have received searching psychological examination at the hands of experts.^ The novel and interesting thing about this Quaker experiment is that it furnishes an opportunity to study inward mystical religion embodied in a group and worked out through a long span of historical develop- ment. We shall here see the intense personal faith of one or a few fusing an entire group and creating an atmo- sphere, a climate, into which children were born and through which they formed their lives ; we shall be able to study the effect of the cooling processes of time on this faith so intense at its origin ; we shall discover how this startlingly bold Principle met the slow siftings and testings of history ; and we shall find out how any merely inward and mystical facts must be supplemented and corrected by the wider concrete and objective experience of the race. It is true, no doubt, that religion is in the last analysis a personal matter, but it is also true that nobody cut apart from social interests and isolated from the purposes and strivings of a group of fellows could become a person at all, or could exhibit what we mean by religion. And, therefore, while we go to biography for our most definite accounts of religious experience, it is through the unfolding of history that we can trace out the full signi- ficance of a first-hand faith like the one here in question, and only in the vast laboratory of history, where every hypothesis must submit to a stern test, can it be fairly verified or transcended. The following chapters as they unfold will present the Quaker Principle in sufficient detail, will exhibit it in sharp collision with other views, and will show its points of strength and weakness ; but a few clues indicated here in the Introduction will perhaps help the reader to find his way more easily and more intelligently. 1 James, Varieties of Religious Experience \ Coe, Spiritual Life ; Granger, The Soul of a Christian- Pratt, The Psychology of Religious Belief; Ames, The Psychology of Religious Experience ; Delacroix, Us Grands Mystiques chritiens ; Inge, Christian MysHcism ; Von Hiigel, The Mystical Element in Religion ; Evelyn Underbill, Mysticism ; Jones. Studies in Mystical Religion INTRODUCTION xix I. One point which this volume will clearly settle is the fact that there existed in the Colonies, before the arrival of the Quaker missionaries, a large number of persons, in some instances more or less defined groups of persons, who were seeking after a freer and more inward type of religion than that which prevailed in any of the established Churches. The period of the English Commonwealth witnessed an extraordinary revival of faith in man's power to dis- cover the inward way to God, and mystical sects, some of them wise and sane, some of them foolish and fanatical, swarmed almost faster than they could be named. These mystical sectaries had one idea in common : they believed that God was in man and that revelation was not closed. They were waiting for the dawn of a fresh Light from heaven.i Wherever English Colonists of this period went these sectaries went too. They were a constant annoyance to New England Puritans, to Dutch Calvinists, and to Virginia Churchmen. They generally gathered kindred spirits around them and quietly — or sometimes noisily — propagated their mystical faith. They exalted personal experience, direct intercourse with God, and so put much less stress than their neighbours did upon the forms and doctrines which had come to be regarded as essential elements of a sound and stable faith. This was the prepared soil in which Quakerism spread at its first appearing, and without which the efforts of the propagators, however valiant, would almost certainly have been futile. The Quaker missionaries simply gave positive direction to tendencies already powerfully underway. They brought to clear focus ideas which were before vague and indefinite, and they fused into white heat spirits that were feeling after and dimly seeking what they now heard in their own tongue. The first " Quaker Churches " in America were formed out of this sort of material ; and so too were many of the Meetings which came into being at later periods of expansion. ^ See chapters xiv. -xx. of my Studies in Mystical Religion. XX QUAKERS IN AMERICAN ^kjukji-hcj 2. One of the first tasks which confronts the historian who proposes to deal with the religious life of the Colonies — especially of the New England Colonies — is to understand and fairly estimate the collision between •the Puritans and the Quakers. In many respects they were both the product of a common movement, the spiritual offspring of the same epoch. They both possessed a passion for righteousness — a moral earnestness — that hardly has a historical parallel except in the great Hebrew prophets. They both took a very pro- nounced stand against " natural pleasures," enjoyments of " the world " and of " the flesh," in fact against actions of any kind along the line of least resistance. They were both opposed to fashions and customs which fostered, in any way, looseness of life, or which ministered, in any degree, to personal pride and selfishness. In short, they were both " puritan," in the ancient sense of the word, in their moral basis and in their conception of social proprieties. They both hated tyranny with an intense hatred, though they took very different ways of destroying it ; and they both abhorred sacerdotalism in religion, though they drew the line where sacerdotalism began at very different points. But if they were allied in spirit in some common elemental aspects ; they were nevertheless exponents of very antagonistic types of religion which, seen from the different angles of vision and perspective, were absolutely irreconcilable, and it was still the fashion then to count it sin to be weak in infallibility. Our generation is so open-minded and hospitable; so weaned of the taste of finality-doctrines, that we look almost with amazement at these exponents of the fiery positive ; these tournaments to settle which "infallible truth" really was infallible. We must, however, always bear in mind that religious indifference is a distinctly modern trait. The testimony of the Rev. Mr. Ward of Ipswich, Massachusetts, in 1645, might be paralleled in almost any ecclesiastical writing of that period : " It is said that men ought to have liberty of conscience and that it is persecution to INTRODUCTION xxi debar them of it. I can rather stand amazed than reply to this. It is an astonishment that the brains of a man should be parboiled in such impious ignorance." John Callender, writing of the freedom established in the little Colony on the island of Rhode Island says with much truth : " In reality the true Grounds of Liberty of Conscience were not then [1637] known, or embraced by any Sect or Party of Christians ; all parties seemed to think that as they only were in possession of the Truth, so they alone had a right to restrain and crush all other opinions, which they respectively called Error and Heresy, where they were the most numerous and powerful." ^ Here in the same field were two exponents of the " fiery positive," both profoundly, sincerely conscious of the infallible truth of their convictions, and with their lives staked upon divergent and irreconcilable conceptions of Divine revelation. For the Puritan, revelation was a miraculous projection of God's Word and Will from the supernatural world into this world. This " miraculous projection " had been made only in a distinct " dispensa- tion," through a limited number of Divinely chosen, specially prepared " instruments," who received and transmitted the pure Word of God. When the " dis- pensation " ended, revelation came to a definite close. No .word more could be added, as also none could be subtracted. All spiritual truth for the race for all ages was now unveiled ; the only legitimate function which the man of God could henceforth exercise was that of interpretation. He could declare what the Word of God meant and how it was to be applied to the complicated affairs of human society. Only a specialist in theology could, from the nature of the case, be a minister under this system. The minister thus became invested with an extraordinary dignity and possessed of an influence quite sui generis. For the Quaker, revelation was confined to no " dis- pensation " — it had never been closed. If any period ' Idiaa. OaXSsa&a' 5 Historical Discourse {fio%\.oi\, 1739). xxii QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES was peculiarly " the dispensation of the Holy Spirit," the Quaker believed that it was the present in which he was living. Instead of limiting the revelation of the Word of God to a few miraculous "instruments," who had lived in a remote "dispensation," he insisted that God enlightens every soul that comes into the world, communes by His Holy Spirit with all men everywhere, illuminates the conscience with a clear sense of the right and the wrong course in moral issues, and reveals His Will in definite and concrete matters to those who are sensitive recipients of it. The true minister, for the Quaker of that period, was a prophet who spoke under a moving and by a power beyond his human powers, and so was, in fresh and living ways, a revealer of present truth, and not a mere interpreter of a past revelation. The Quaker " meeting " was, in theory at least, a continuation of Pentecost — an occasion for the free blowing of the Spirit of God on men. It was plainly impossible in the seventeenth century for those two types of Christianity to live peaceably side by side. A tragic collision was inevitable. 3. There is another problem in Quaker history no less urgent than the problem of collision with divergent conceptions of truth, and that is the strange fact that a movement so full of vitality and power at its origin ceased to expand with the expanding life of America. So long as the " tragic collisions " lasted, the Quakers flourished and seemed sure of a significant future in the unfolding spiritual life of America ; as soon as they were free and unopposed there occurred a slowing-down and a loss of dynamic impact on the world. No treatment of colonial Quakerism can be adequate which fails to face this somewhat depressing fact, for the historian who presents the assets and achievements of a movement is under obligation to deal squarely as well with its liabilities, weaknesses, and failures. The thing which above everything else doomed the movement to a limited and subordinate r61e was the early adoption of the ideal that Quakers were to form INTRODUCTION xxiii a "peculiar people." In the creative stage of the movement the leaders were profoundly conscious that they had discovered a universal truth which was to permeate humanity, and form, by its inherent demonstra- tion and power, a World-Church — the Church of the living God. It was in that faith and in the inspiration of that great idea that the pioneer missionaries went forth. Then gradually, at first unconsciously, in the face of a very stubborn world that not only was not persuaded, but further went positively to work to suppress the alleged "fresh revelation," the movement underwent a radical change of ideal. The aim slowly narrowed down to the formation of a " spiritual remnant," set apart to guard and preserve " the truth " in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation that would not see and believe. The world-vision faded out, and the attention focused on " Quakerism " as an end-in-itself. The transformation which occurred in this case has many striking parallels in the history of other spiritual experiments. The living idea organises a definite Society for the propaga- tion of it, and lo, the Society unconsciously smothers the original idea and becomes absorbed in itself! It is a very ancient tragedy, and that tragedy happened again here in this movement. The transformation is written large on the Records of the meetings and in the Journals of the leaders. " Truth " soon came to be a definite, static thing. No creed was made and no declaration of faith was adopted, but a well-defined body of Quaker conceptions soon came into shape, and came also into habitual use. Not only did the ideas of the Society crystallise into static concepts of truth, the form of worship too became fixed and well-nigh unalterable. There was no " programme " of service and no positive prearrangement, but it was soon settled that silence was the essential " form " for true worship, and that spiritual ministry must be spontaneous, unpremeditated, and of the " prophetic " type. The primitive aim at simplicity and the desire to escape fiom slavery to fashion underwent a corresponding xxiv QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES change and dropped to the easy substitute of a fixed form of dress and speech, which soon became itself a kind of slavery. A definite attitude toward music and art and " diversions " in general was adopted so that individuals might be relieved of the difficulty, and incidentally of the danger, of personal decision. Marriage with "the world's people" was made as difficult as it possibly could be made. In short, a Quaker became a well-marked and definitely-labelled individual — quite as rigidly set as any of the " religious orders " of Church history and quite as bent on preserving the peculiar type. Men spent their precious lives, not in propagating the living principles of spiritual religion in the great life of the world, but in perfecting and transmitting a " system " within the circle of the Society, and the heart- burnings and tragedies which mark the lives of the consecrated men and women who, in these days, bore the ark, were too often concerned w^ith the secondary rather than with the primary things of spiritual warfare. The martyrdoms for the world-cause were heroic, dramatic, and of universal interest ; these later travails and tragedies often seem petty, trivial, and unnecessary, and they make a very limited appeal to human interest. The movement was hampered from the start, and in every stage of its history during the period of this volume by the imperfect conception of the inward Light, and of the whole relation between the Divine and the human, which was consciously or unconsciously adopted. This was perhaps inevitable, as every movement is necessarily more or less bound up with the prevailing ideas, the intellectual climate, of the age in which it takes its rise. In the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries a dualistic universe was taken for granted. There was a sharp distinction, a wide chasm, between the "natural" and the " supernatural." The urgent question with every- body was — not how the entire universe from material husk to spiritual core could be unified and comprehended as an organic whole, but how the chasm which sundered the two worlds could be miraculously bridged. It is not our INTRODUCTION xxV problem to-day, but it was the one the Quaker was facing. His opponents said that the chasm was bridged by a miraculous communication of the Word of God in a definite and finished Revelation. He said that it was bridged by the communication of a supernatural Light given to each soul. The trouble was that he never could succeed in bringing into unity the two things assumed to be sundered. On the one hand there was the " mere man," whom he assumed, as everybody else did, to be, in his natural condition, non-spiritual and incapable of doing anything toward his own salvation ; and on the other a Divine Light, or Seed of God, projected into this " natural man " as the illuminating, saving, and revealing Principle in him. The Light was distinctly conceived as something supernatural and foreign to man as man — something added to him as a gift. With this basal conception for his working theory, the Quaker naturally and logically looked upon the true minister as a passive and oracular " instrument " of the Holy Spirit. His message, in so far as it was " spiritual," was believed to come " through him and from beyond him." He was not a teacher or an interpreter, he was a " revealer " through whom Divine truth was " opened." The direct result of such a view, of course, was that human powers were lightly esteemed and quite distrusted. Instead of having a principle which brought the finite being, with all his potential powers, into organic union with the self- revealing, co-operating God, thus producing a spiritual, developing, autonomous personality, with an incentive to expand all its capacities ; he had a fundamental con- ception which tended toward a distrust and suppression of the native powers. Spiritual messages, instead of being thought of as the contribution which a person himself makes when he is raised to his highest and best by co-operation with the Divine Spirit in whom his finite life is rooted, were thought of as messages oracu- larly " given " to him — his part being simply that of a transmitter. The human element in man's spiritual activities was xxvi QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES discounted and almost eliminated in order to heighten the Divine aspect, as in an earlier theology the human element in Christ had been suppressed to exalt His divinity. That this unpsychological theory worked out badly in practice there can be no question in the mind of anybody who studies the movement historically ; but it only means that they were unsuccessful and unhappy in their way of formulating their theory of Divine and human intercourse. What they wanted to say was that God and men were in direct correspondence, and that man at his best could lay hold of life and light and wisdom and truth which ordin- arily transcends his narrow finite self. Of such heightened correspondence there is plenty of evidence. The only pity is that their wrongly -formulated theory so often stood in their way and hampered them and prevented them from a normal use of all their capacities. Their failure to appreciate the importance of the fullest expansion of human personality by education is the primary cause of their larger failure to win the command- ing place in American civilisation of which their early history gave promise. Their central Principle, properly understood, called for a fearless education, for there is no safety in individualism, in personal responsibility, or in democracy, whether in civil or religious matters, unless every individual is given a chance to correct his narrow individualism in the light of the experience of larger groups of men. If a man is to be called upon to follow " his Light," he must be helped to correct his subjective seeniings by the gathered objective wisdom of the race, as expressed in scientific truth, in historical knowledge, in established institutions, and in the sifted literature of the world. The Quaker ideal of ministry, too, calls for a broad and expansive education even more than does that of any other religious body. If the particular sermon is not to be definitely prepared, then the person who is to minister must himself hz prepared. If he is to avoid the repetition of his own petty notions and commonplace thoughts he must form a richer and more comprehensive experience from which to draw. INTRODUCTION xxvii For every fiery prophet in old times, And all the sacred madness of the bard, When God made music thro' him, could but speak His music by the framework and the chord.i George Fox had moments of insight into the import- ance of this objective element, and in a great sentence he urged the founding of educational institutions for teaching " everything civil and useful in creation " ; but institutions of such scope unfortunately did not get founded. If there could have been established, in the northern, central, and southern sections of the Atlantic coast line, institutions adapted to the right education of Quaker youth, as Har- vard and Yale were to the education of the Puritan youth, there would be quite another story to tell. As the problem was worked out, no adequate education for Quaker youth was available. They soon found themselves largely cut off from the great currents of culture, and they thus missed the personal enlargement which comes when one is forced to make his own ideals iit into larger systems of thought, and is compelled to reshape them in the light of facts. The absence of constructive leaders, the later tendency to withdraw from civic tasks, the relaxing of the idea of reshaping the world, which this history reveals, were due, in the main, to the lack of expansive education. The beautiful old-fashioned home passed on to the child who came into it the stock of truth and the definite ideals which were alive in it ; it fed the growing mind with the litera- ture which its people had produced, and the Meetings furnished a spiritual climate that was sweet and whole- some to breathe, but there was nothing to lift the youth up to a sight of new horizons. He was more or less doomed to the level of the past. The denominations that were training the fittest of their sons to become thinkers and leaders were sure sooner or later to win the birthright and to take away the blessing from the Quakers. With the Revolutionary War there came a great awakening, which showed itself most definitely in a determination to provide larger opportunities for Quaker ^ Tennyson's " Holy Grail. " xxviii QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES education. Steps were taken in each section of the country to provide for the education of the new genera- tion. It was a fortunate awakening and it has led to great results, but it came too late to enable the Quakers to achieve the place in the civilisation of the Western world which their early history prognosticated. They were already being left behind, and were already accepting the view that they were to be a small and isolated sect — " a remnant " of God's people. The fateful years which were selecting the dominating religious forces of America were the years of colonial development, and during those eventful years the Quakers were not awake to the chance that was going by. Then, too, when the awakening did come, there was still a long period during which contracted ideals of education prevailed. Nobody seemed able to get beyond the narrow plan of " guarded education," which is not, in the true sense of the word, education at all. It is still only the transmission of certain well-defined and "safe" ideas and tends to pro- duce uncreative and unconstructive minds. It is a well- meant plan for the propagation of an existing body of ideas, but it does not and cannot make large and force- ful leaders and creators of fresh ideals.^ The whole trend of the century before had been toward the pre- servation of a definite type and had fostered the timid attitude. It was not to be expected, when the awakening came, that there" would be men ready for the bold ex- periment of a broad and fearless education which set the youth free, with open mind, to study " everything civil *and useful in creation," and which left him to make his own selection of what was to be truth for him. The Quaker has slowly found the road to that genuine type of education, but he has come to it late. Whether he now has recovering power enough to repair the damages of the past and can still realise the destiny which seemed his in the last half of the seventeenth century, is not a question to be answered here, but it is a fact that his 1 ' ' Guarded " is often used in another sense, namely, that young and tender children, while being educated, are to be shielded from immoral influences, which is, of course, highly commendable. INTRODUCTION xxix failure to provide for an adequate education during the formative years lies at the base of his larger failure to arrive} 4. In one particular respect the colonial Quakers made a very important contribution to religion — they produced saints, and these saints were and remain (he finest and most fragrant bloom of American Quakerism. Sainte-Beuve has given, in his Port Royal, a penetrat- ing account of persons who have been transformed into saintly life through the reception of Divine grace. " Such souls," he says, " arrive at a certain fixed and invincible state, a state which is genuinely heroic, and from out of which the greatest deeds are performed. . . . They have an inner state which before all things is one of love and humility, of infinite confidence in God, and of severity to themselves, accompanied with tenderness for others." This is an accurate account of the colonial Quaker saint — invincibly fixed in purpose, genuinely heroic, ready for great deeds, possessed of infinite con- fidence in God, and withal tender in love and humility. I am not sure that our busy and commercial age would call these saints " efficient " — they were not trained and equipped as modern social workers are — but they were triumphantly beautiful spirits, and the world still needs beautiful lives as much as it needs " efficient " ones, and the beautiful life in the long run is dynamic and does inherit the earth.^ These rare and beautiful souls, like great artistic creations of beauty, are not capable of explanation in utilitarian terms, nor can their origin be traced in terms of cause and effect, but it can safely be said that they never come except among people consecrated to the Invisible Church. It requires a pure and fervid devotion to the Pattern in the mount, a loyalty to the holy Jerusalem — the Urbs Sion mystica — to fashion a Christian ^ It must not be concluded because Quakerism did not flourish under these conditions and limitations that therefore its spiritual ideal has broken down. On the contrary, it has hardly yet been given an adequate trial. ^ John Woolman is the consummate flower of the type I have in mind. It was a saying of his that ' ' some glances of real beauty may be seen in their faces who dwell in true meekness." XXX QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES saint, whether Catholic or Quaker. No one can be wholly absorbed in the affairs of an actual earthly church without being marred by the politics of it, and without becoming small and narrow and provincial by reason of the limitations of locality and temporal climate. The saint belongs to an actual church, to be sure, loves it and serves it, but he keeps his soul set on the vision of the Church Invisible in which the saints of all ages are members with him, and in that vision he lives. There must also be a loosening of the hold on " the world " to prepare a saint of this type. There must at least be no rivalry to disturb the concentration of soul on eternal Realities. The very rigour of renunciation, the stern demands of a religion which cuts its adherents off from primrose paths of life, seem almost essential to the creation of this kind of saintliness. It is only by strict parallelism with celestial currents, only by drawing on invisible and inexhaustible resources of Grace, only by the cultivation of a finer spiritual perception than most possess that inward grace and central calm are achieved ; only by stillness and communion that spiritual poise and power are won. There were, in the days of which I am writing, many Friends who had found the secret inner way into a real Holy of Holies. They had learned how to live from within outward, how to be refreshed with inward bubblings, how to walk their hard straight path with shining faces, though they wist not their faces did shine. The Quakers have no " calendar," no bead roll, and they have always been shy and cautious even of the word " saint," but almost every Meeting from Maine to South Carolina had during the period under review some persons who through help from Above refined and sub- limated their nature and all unconsciously grew sweet and fragrant with the odour of saintly life. 5. One other positive contribution which they made to genuine spiritual religion remains to be catalogued — their contribution to the spread of lay-religion, by which I mean a form of religion dissociated from ecclesiasticism, and penetrating the life and activities of ordinary men. INTRODUCTION xxxi The real power of Quakerism lay in the quality of life produced in the rank and file of the membership. This history is weak, no doubt, in biographies of luminous leaders who rose far above the group and stood out as distinct peaks. Colonial Quakerism would have proved a barren field for a Carlyle, who assumed that history is the biography of heroes, raised by their genius head and shoulders above the level of their contemporaries. The real glory of this movement was the " levelling up " of an entire people. Farmers, with hands made rough by the plough-handle, in hundreds of rural localities not only preached messages of spiritual power on meeting -days, but, what is more to the point, lived daily lives of radiant goodness in simple neighbourhood service. Women who had slight chances for culture, and who had to do the hard work of pioneer housewifery, by some subtle spiritual alchemy, were transformed into a virile saint- hood which made its power felt both in the Sunday gathering and in the unordained care of souls through- out the community. It was a real experiment in the " priesthood of believers," and it was an incipient stage of what has become one of the most powerful spiritualis- ing forces in our country — the unordained lay ministry of a vast multitude of men and women who have attacked every form of entrenched evil, and who, in city and country, are taking up the " cure of souls " with insight and efficiency. It will be obvious to the reader that this book is not written from the point of view of the antiquarian. The historical facts have been carefully gathered, sifted, and verified, and they are as accurate as research could make them, but the central interest from first to last has been to discover how a group of men and women wrought out their souls' faith in an earlier century. They were persons who believed that within the deeps of themselves they touched the Infinite, that within their own spirits they could hear the living word of the Eternal. They believed this mighty thing, and they tried to make their belief real in life and word and deed. It is worth while xxxii QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES perhaps even in this busy age to stop amid the din of commercial activity to see how plain people, raised to a kind of grandeur by their faith, tried to bring to the world once again a religion of life, and endeavoured to show that God is, as of old, an Immanuel God — with us and in us, the Life of our lives. BOOK I THE QUAKERS IN NEW ENGLAND CHAPTER I A PRE-QUAKER MOVEMENT The beginnings of our American colonies are, for the most part, inextricably bound up with the history of the differentiation and development of great religious move- ments in England and on the continent of Europe. The tiny commonwealths, brought hither in sailing vessels of the seventeenth century, were begotten in religious faith, and were formed and shaped by zealous men to whom some peculiar type of religion was dearer than country, more precious even than life itself The story of colonial America can no more be told with religion left out than it could be told with the economic aspects of soil and forests and food-stuffs omitted, or with the fact of Indian neighbours neglected. As it was religion that was in most cases the creative spring which pushed these colonists to sea in their venturous ships, so too it was for many years religion which shaped the policies, supplied the controlling ideas, and furnished the fundamental interests of these forefathers of our national life. I am not here undertaking the large task of studying the religious development of colonial America, but I shall be quite satisfied if I can well perform the simpler task of telling the story — surely complex and intricate enough — of one single religious movement which pro- foundly influenced the course of American history, and powerfully affected the personal lives of the citizens in nearly all the original colonies, — I mean the coming of the Quakers. The first Quakers to land on American soil were two 3 4 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i women, named Mary Fisher and Ann Austin,^ who came from England by way of Barbadoes, and who landed in the city of Boston on the i ith of July 1656, to the consterna- tion of the magistrates of this Puritan town, then twenty-six years old. George Bishop's statement, addressed to the magistrates in 1660, is hardly an exaggeration: "Two poor women arriving in your harbour, so shook ye, to the everlasting shame of you, and of your established peace and order, as if a formidable army had invaded your borders." ^ To understand why the arrival of these " two poor women " of the Quaker faith produced such consternation in the peaceful town, we must go back and pass in review a very famous and important religious movement in Massachusetts history. It is important here for two reasons : first because it illustrates admirably the way in which the Puritan colonists dealt with persons who laid claim to a present revelation, an immediate experience of Divine communications ; and secondly, because it was a direct preparation for the spread and propagation of Quakerism. I refer to the story of Anne Hutchinson and her " party " — often called, though unfairly, the " Antinomian controversy." This controversy, as all our primary authorities admit, came near disrupting the colony even while it was in its swaddling clothes, and it seriously threatened to frustrate the plans of the founders. It was the most dangerous storm the nascent Puritan commonwealth weathered, for Pequots and Narragansetts never brought the Colony to such a close strait as did this woman's tongue and wit. The whole controversy arose over the nature and extent of the Divine influence on the human soul. Anne Hutchinson, the chief actor in this somewhat tragic drama, was born about 1590, being the daughter of Francis Marbury, a well-known London preacher. She was married to William Hutchinson about 161 2, and 1 Elizabeth Harris came to Maryland the same year, but apparently slightly later. See chapter on "The Planting of Quakerism in the Southern Colonies " a Bishop's New England Judged (edition of 1703), p. 7. The first edition was published in 1661, but this is extremely rare. CH. I A PRE-QUAKER MOVEMENT 5 passed the next twenty years of her married life quietly at Alford in Lincolnshire, where she listened, as occasion offered, with great satisfaction and admiration to the preaching of John Cotton, minister of St. Botolph's church in English Boston. He migrated to Boston in New England in 1633, and William Hutchinson and his wife followed him to the New World in the autumn of the next year, their oldest son, Edward, having already accompanied John Cotton. John Winthrop tells us that Mrs. Hutchinson was " a woman of a ready wit and bold spirit." ^ John Wheel- wright, her brother-in-law and fellow-sufferer, says : " As for Mrs. Hutchinson, she was a woman of good wit, and not only so, but naturally of good judgment too, as appeared in her civil occasions. In spirituals, indeed, she gave her understanding over into the power of [inward] suggestion and immediate dictates."^ Cotton Mather, imitating an earlier account, sets her down as possessing "an haughty carriage, busie spirit, competent wit, and a voluble tongue " — " a non-such among the people."^ Thomas Welde, her most unrelenting and ingenious foe, informs us that she had " a haughty and fierce carriage, a nimble wit and active spirit, and was more bold than a man, the breeder and nourisher of all distempers," and he does not neglect to mention her " voluble tongue " and he thinks that her " understanding and judgment " were " inferior to those of many women." * Johnson declares that she was "the masterpiece of women's wit ! " * There is also a like consensus of opinion upon her social helpfulness and sympathetic spirit. She was a gifted nurse and peculiarly skilful in dealing with "ailments peculiar to her sex." She was the person ^ Winthrop's History of New England from j6jo to i64g, edited by James Savage (Boston, 1853), vol. i. p. 239. ' Mercurius Americanus, printed in Bell's John Wheelwright, Prince Soc. Pub. (Boston, 1876), p. 197. ' Mather's Magnalia (Hartford, 1853), vol. ii. pp. 516 and 517. Mather is here following Welde. ^ Welde's .ffw^, Reign, and Ruin of Antinomians, etc., ist ed. 1644, p. 31. ' Johnson's Wonder-working Providence, lib. i. c. 42. 6 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i instinctively sent for at times of childbirth, and she knew how to penetrate into the mysteries of morbid states and mental and spiritual troubles which abounded under the new and hard conditions of frontier life. Even Welde, for whom she is " the American Jezebel," admits that she was "a woman very helpful in time of child- birth and other occasions of bodily disease, and well furnished with means for those purposes."^ She had thus a natural entrde to women's hearts, and possessed as she was of sympathy, kindliness, manifold interests, and withal of that indescribable trait which we name " magnetism," she was destined to play an important r61e in the new settlement.^ This gentlewoman, admitted by all authorities to have possessed a brilliant mind and kindly nature, and as certainly possessed of a genuine passion for a religion of vital reality and inward power, hit upon the plan of holding a "women's meeting" at her house each week, for the primary purpose of presenting the substance of the previous Sunday sermon to the women of the com- munity who had been prevented from attending the original service. This meeting opened to her exactly the career for which her talents and gifts fitted her, and she very quickly became " a burning and a shining light " in this little circle of women. We can hardly imagine, with our crowded, complex lives, how monotonous and limited were the lives of the women in those primitive days. The absorbing interests for them were the neigh- bourhood "news," and the affairs of the Church, even down to the details of the " headings " of the last Sunday sermon, or the last Thursday " lecture " ! There is little ground for assuming, as so many writers have done, that Anne Hutchinson was insatiably "ambitious" and "light-headed." She simply had the wit to start a movement which struck a line of native interest in the community and which peculiarly suited her own gifts and genius, and the natural results followed. 1 Welde, op. cit. p. 31. 2 See, for a sketch of her character, G. E. Ellis's Puritan Age in Massachusetts, pp. 307 seq. CH. I A PRE-QUAKER MOVEMENT 7 The " women's meeting " proved to be as popular as the modern fads which sweep like a contagion through our present-day social circles, and, almost before she knew it, she found herself a person to be reckoned with throughout the little commonwealth, and the leading influence in the town of Boston/ The Hutchinson " meeting," by an almost unconscious propulsion, soon passed beyond its original scope, which was to review and comment upon the sermon of the preceding Sunday. The leader began to compare sermons, and to mark off one type of religious teaching which they heard from the Rev. John Cotton as higher than another type which they heard from the Rev. John Wilson ; and little by little she herself became the prophet and expounder of the " higher type," with the imminent danger of brewing ecclesiastical jealousies. The important point now is to get before us a clear conception of these two types of religion upon which the community was cleaving into two parties. Most modern writers give up the distinction as hopeless, and tell us that the whole controversy was a notorious instance of " confused theological jargon," out of which nobody, either then or now, could, or can, make any clear sense. It is true that Winthrop's account is full of confusion, and that he himself says : " No man could tell (except some few, who knew the bottom of the matter) where any difference was." " And yet as soon as we go for light to the actual words of the main actors themselves, we find that those of the Hutchinson party were champions of a type of religion sharply differentiated from that expounded and exhibited by the clergymen of the Colony, excepting only John Cotton, with whom Anne Hutchinson was well pleased, and John Wheelwright, her brother-in-law. The two types were named respectively " a covenant of Grace," and " a covenant of Works." The foremost exponents of the former type were Anne Hutchinson herself; her brother-in-law the Rev. John Wheelwright, ^ Winthrop says : ' ' All the congregation of Boston, except four or five, closed with [her] opinions. " Op. cit. vol. i. p. 252. ^ Op. cit. vol. i. p. 255. 8 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk, i pastor of the little congregation at Mount Wollaston (now Braintree) ; Sir Harry Vane, then Governor of the Colony ; and the Rev. John Cotton, the most shining intellectual light at that time on the American continent. He, how- ever, drew back when the movement reached the perilous edge, and took his place, whether honourably or dishonour- ably, among the opposers of the " new opinions." There were many prominent persons, besides the " exponents," who were warm sympathisers with the " new opinions," and who shared the opprobrium and penalties which were meted out to those who dared to think for themselves and to diverge from the beaten track of the prevailing theology. The most noted of these sympathisers were William Coddington, John Coggeshall, William Aspinwall, Nicholas Easton, Mary Dyer, and Captain John Underbill (a somewhat serio-comic actor in the drama), some of whom, with many more here unnamed, will reappear in the Quaker ranks. The leaders of the opposition forces were John Winthrop, the loftiest figure in that colonial commonwealth, though for the moment superseded in the governorship ; Rev. John Wilson, pastor of Boston ; Rev. Hugh Peters, pastor of Salem, and later prominent in the greater drama of the Civil War in England ; John Endicott, and Thomas Dudley, both of large fame in the governorship ; Rev. Thomas Welde, the ungentle historian of the controversy, and all the other ministers of the Colony. The real issue, as I see it in the fragments that are preserved, was an issue between what we nowadays call " religion of the first-hand type," and " religion of the second-hand type," that is to say, a religion on the one hand which insists on " knowledge of acquaintance " through immediate experience, and a religion on the other hand which magnifies the importance and sufficiency of " knowledge about." Anne Hutchinson precipitated the controversy by an assertion — under the existing circumstances as certain to produce a furious controversy as a flaming firebrand in dry prairie grass is sure to produce a conflagration — that John Cotton preached a CH. I A PRE-QUAKER MOVEMENT 9 covenant of Grace, and that the other ministers of the Colony preached a covenant of Works.^ This latter phrase, which was a coinage of the Reform- ation, had come to mean a legal system of religion, or what St. Paul branded as " a religion of the letter " — a thing of "beggarly elements." Those who used the phrase intended it to characterise a form of religion which consisted essentially in a system of correct views, in the acceptance of a set of Divine commandments and sacred ceremonies, and the aim to live a life of strict obedience to this elaborate, divinely communicated system. Worship under this system is based on the commands of the covenant ; it is not something springing out of the inward disposition of the worshipper. It was one of the central features of this " system " that the relation between God and man was a relation of covenant. By the " fall," the direct fellowship-relation with God had been broken and annulled. God was no longer Friend but just Judge. This Judge, instead of destroying the sinful race, made a covenant, in which He showed His mercy and opened the way of escape for man. This covenant, set forth in the Holy Scriptures, contains a full, complete, and final expression of God's will and requirements — all that pertains to life and salvation. Man's part is, not to question why, not to pry into the inscrutable will, but to comply strictly with the terms of the covenant. Under this covenant the " minister," by whatever name he may be called, is an exalted personage, quite in a class apart. He is the ofificial interpreter of the terms and the meaning of the covenant. He is the mouthpiece of the covenant- maker, the highest spokesman of the will revealed in the covenant. The simple point for us is this, that Anne Hutchinson did not like that type of religion — it was to her mind only " legalism," mere " letter," and it left the inward life unchanged and untransformed, however ^ The proceedings of the " Examination of Mrs. Hutchinson " are given in an Appendix to Hutchinson's Massachusetts Bay, ii. 482-520. My statement is founded on Hugh Peters's testimony (p. 491). Mrs. Hutchinson claimed that Peters did not report her fairly. But the evidence is clear that she did make these two classes : those in the covenant of Grace and those in the covenant of Works. lo QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i correct the outward conformity might be ; and she boldly announced this type of religion to be actually existing in the Colony, and to be supported by all the ministers except John Wheelwright, her brother-in-law, and John Cotton, " teacher " in the Boston church. Against this legalistic religion of rules and command- ments, with its remote, absentee God, she set what she called the " covenant of Grace." By this she meant, and so did her contemporaries, a religion grounded in a direct experience of God's grace and redeeming love, a religion not of pious performances, of solemn fasts and sombre faces, of painful search after the exact requirements of the law, but a religion which began and ended in triumphant certainty of Divine forgiveness. Divine fellow- ship, and present Divine illumination. Winthrop tells us that " Mrs. Hutchinson brought over with her two dangerous errors : ( i ) That the Person of the Holy Ghost dwells in a justified person. (2) That no sanctification can help to evidence our justification." ^ I admit that this second " error " sounds like " theological jargon," but it is only a seventeenth - century way of saying that no deeds however holy, no acts however saintly, are in themselves a sufficient evidence of a restored and vital relation with God ; or as John Wheelwright put it in his famous fast - day sermon : " There is ■ nothing under heaven may justify any 6ui the revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ [in him]." Out of these "errors," Winthrop says, there sprang the view that the Christian — the true Christian — is united with the Holy Ghost, and of himself becomes dead and "hath no gifts and graces, nor other sanctification, but the Holy Ghost Himself." ^ These " errors " sound at this distance remarkably like some of St. Paul's " truths " ; for example : " I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live ; yet not I, Christ liveth in me." " Christ is made unto us sanctification." " Ye are builded together for a habitation of God through the 1 Winthrop, op. cit. vol. i. p. 239. ' Op. cit. vol. i. p. 239. cH. I A PRE-QUAKER MOVEMENT 1 1 Spirit"^ John Cotton had, even before his coming to America, been a fervent expounder of this inward religion, and he undoubtedly held the essential principles of Mrs. Hutchinson's teaching. William Coddington, writing to the magistrates of the Colony in 1672 to protest against the persecution of the Quakers, calls upon those in authority to " turn to the Light within you, even Christ in you," and then he (having himself been one of the Boston founders who sailed on the Arbelld) adds : " This [teaching of inward Light] was declared unto you by the servant of the Lord, John Cotton, on his lecture day, when the ships were ready to depart for England. He stated tlie difference ; it was about Grace. He magnified the Grace in us ; the priests [i.e. the other ministers] the Grace without or upon them. All the difference in the country was about Grace, but the difference was as great, he said, as between light and darkness, heaven and hell, life and death." ^ Cotton did not, however, go as far as the other expounders of " the covenant of Grace " did. He held for the " indwelling of the Holy Ghost" but not for a personal union of the believer with the Holy Ghost.' Governor Vane went to the far extreme, and held the view that there is a personal union between the believer and the Holy Ghost, so that a divine life is actually begotten in the soul.* But the most important document in the controversy for an understanding of the "covenant of Grace" is, beyond question. Wheelwright's " Fast - day sermon." John Wheelwright was born in the Fen country of Lincolnshire, probably in 1592. He matriculated at Cambridge University at about the age of eighteen, receiving his B.A. degree in 16 14 and his M.A. in 1618. He was intimately associated with Oliver Cromwell, and the Protector once made the remark : " I remember the time when I was more afraid of meeting Wheelwright ^ Gal. ii. 20 ; i. Cor. i. 30 ; Eph. ii. 22. ^ William Coddington's A Deinonstration of True Love (1674), p. 17. Com- pare Winthrop's account of this sermon, vol. i. p. 254. ' Winthrop, op, cit. vol. i. p. 240. * Winthrop, op. cit. vol. i. p. 246. 12 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i at football, than I have been since of meeting an army in the field, for I was infallibly sure of being tripped up." 1 He had a successful career as vicar of Bilsby, where "he was instrumental in the conversion of many souls, and was highly esteemed among serious Christians."^ He was, however, " silenced " for nonconformity, and his vicarage was treated " as though vacant " and his successor appointed in 1633, ten years from the time of his installa- tion.^ He landed in Boston in May 1636, being now married to his second wife, Mary, the daughter of Edward Hutchinson, a sister of William Hutchinson, husband of Anne. There was a strong movement made to appoint Wheelwright a "teacher" in the church of Boston, but this plan was blocked by the vigorous opposition of Winthrop, who questioned his " soundness," asserting that he [Wheelwright] held the views that: (i) "a believer was more than a creature," i.e. partook of God in such a way as to be more than "a mere creature," and (2) " that the Person of the Holy Ghost and a believer were united." * He was, therefore, settled at Mount Wollaston. On the 29th of January 1636, Wheelwright was invited to preach the fast-day sermon in the Boston church, which sermon led to his banishment from the colony.^ His text was taken from Matt. ix. 15, " Can the children of the bridechamber mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them ? " He first points out that the reason for fasting is always the absence of Christ, since the real ground for joy and rejoicing is the presence of Christ. It is, he claims, not enough to have the gifts of the Spirit, we must have the Lord Himself; not enough to seek from the Lord "fruits and effects," but we must "see Him with a direct eye of faith and seek His Face." " If we part with Christ we part with our life, for Christ is ^ Bell's John Wheelwright, p. 2. ^ Brooks's Lives of the Puritans, p. 472. * Winthrop calls hira "a silenced minister," vol. i. p. 239. " Winthrop, vol. i. p. 241. Wheelwright himself denied holding the views as attributed to him by Winthrop, op. cit. vol. i. p. 242. 6 Winthrop, vol. i. pp. 256-257. The sermon is printed in full in Bell's John Wheelwright. CH. I A PRE-QUAKER MOVEMENT 13 our life " — not merely " the author of our lives," but the very root of our being, the very Life of our life.^ It is not enough to be under a covenant of Works,, we must have Christ Himself — His very presence. The true Gospel is the revelation of Jesus Christ as our wisdom, our righteousness, our sanctification and redemp- tion. We can attain to nothing truly spiritual until He comes into us with His righteousness, and becomes Him- self our redemption. He is the Well of life of which the wells in the Old Testament were types. If the Philistines fill the Well with earth — the earth of their own inventions — the servants of the Lord must open the Well again ! ^ He is the Light that lighteth every one that cometh into the world, and if we expect to keep Christ, we must hold forth this Light. There is nothing under heaven can justify any one but the revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ within him, and when He converts any soul to Himself He reveals, not some Work, but Himself. To look for salvation by anything short of Christ Himself is a covenant of Works, for under the covenant of Grace nothing is revealed for our righteousness but Christ Himself This experience enables the soul to know that it is justified, for the faith of assurance hath Christ for its object. He gives a new heart through His working in us. This is the covenant of Grace.^ He admits that those under the covenant of Grace, i.e. those who have the inward, mystical experience, are few in number, "a little flock," while those under the covenant of Works are strong in numbers, but one in the life shall chase a thousand.* He admits also that those under a covenant of Works — the legalists, or letter Christians — are in appearance " a wondrous holy people," but the more " holy " they appear the more dangerous ^ Bell, John Wheelwright, pp. 158-159. ^ Ibid. pp. 161-163. ^ Ibid. pp. 164-167. ■• It is interesting to find that Wm. Dewsbury, who came to see the Wood- house sail for America in 1657 with its load of Quaker apostles, said : " Before- one of you that is in the Resurrection and Life in Christ, shall a thousand flee- ... for you in the life are the host of Heaven." — Dewsbury's Works, p. 171. 14 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i they are, for when Christ, who is our real sanctification, comes to the soul He makes " the creature nothing." He admits further that this spiritual doctrine will "cause combustion in the Church," but did not Christ come to cast fire upon the earth ! Peace and quietness are not the things to be most sought — but the truth of God. "To fight courageously for the Lord and to be meek are not opposites, but stand very well together." If the call for it comes, we must be willing to lay down our lives to make the truth prevail.'^ Those who wish to enjoy the presence of Christ must (i) be faithful in life and word; (2) be full of love; and (3) "live pure and blameless lives and give no occasion for others to say that we are libertines or Antinomians ! " ^ The greatest " friends " of the Church and of the common- wealth are those who hold forth Christ Himself, and who labour and endeavour to bring Him to the hearts of the people. The supreme sin is opposition to the Light and persecution of those who bring the Light. Those who have the real presence are in happy estate. If they lose their houses, and lands, and wives, and friends, or even lose religious ordinances, yet they cannot lose the Lord Jesus Christ — this is their great comfort. Though they should lose all they have, yet being made one with Christ and He dwelling in their hearts, they cannot be separated from Him.^ This sermon should leave no doubt in anybody's mind as to what the issue was. It was the old yet ever new issue between a religion of the past and a religion of the present, a religion based on historical facts and promises and a religion based on inward personal experience. At the General Court, which convened on the 19th of March, attended by all the ministers in the Colony, Wheelwright was summoned, proceeded against, and ^ Bell, John Wheeliorighi, pp. 167-171. ''■ No occasion did appear, except possibly in the case of Captain Underbill, and yet the slanderous epithet of " Antinomianism " was fixed upon the movement. Cotton Mather admits that the " opinionists," as he calls them, "appeared wondrous holy, humble, self-denying, and spiritual." — Magnolia (Hartford, 1853), vol. ii. p. 509. ' Bell, John Wheelwright, pp. 175-179. cH. I A PRE-QUAKER MOVEMENT 15 condemned for having incited sedition and having shown contempt in his fast-day sermon. The action against Wheelwright aroused the citizens of Boston, and they presented a remonstrance signed by " above three score " leading persons in the town, in which petition they respectfully declared that the doctrine by "our brother Wheelwright is no other but the expressions of the Holy Ghost Himself," and they claim that the effect of his sermon has not been to incite sedition, " for wee have not drawn the sword as sometime Peter did rashly, neither have wee rescued our innocent brother as sometime the Israelites did Jonathan, and yet they did not seditiously. The covenant of Grace held forth by our brother hath taught us rather to become humble suppliants to your worships, and if wee should not prevaile, wee should rather with patience give our cheeks to the smiter." ^ Sentence against Wheelwright was deferred to the next General Court. The case, however, hung on for months, was thoroughly canvassed in a Synod, and finally in November 1637 the Court pronounced sentence of banishment, giving the victim fourteen days " to settle his affairs " and " depart the Patent." ^ Alone and hardly knowing whither he went, the exile made his difficult way to Exeter, New Hampshire, in a weather so intense that, as he humorously writes, " the very extract-spirits of sedition and contempt," had they been in him, "would have been frozen up and indisposed for action." ^ We must go back now to the case of Anne Hutchin- son, for her views come more clearly to light through the proceedings against her, which accompanied and followed those against her brother-in-law. A Synod of all the ministers in the Colony — the first ever held in America — met at Cambridge, beginning the 9th of September 1637, and lasting twenty-four days, to thresh out the theological differences. All the " opinions " at issue were gone over in minute detail. The result was that " eighty-two opinions " were discovered and declared to be " some blasphemous, others erroneous, and all unsafe," besides ' Bell, p. 21. 2 Mercurius Americanus, Bell, p. 228. ' Ibid. p. 228. i6 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. j " nine unwholesome expressions," and " the Scriptures abused." Mrs. Hutchinson's "meetings," being of a "prophetical way," were voted to be a nuisance and " without rule." The further definite results were the sentence against Wheelwright at the following General Court, as we have seen, and the trial at the same Court of Anne Hutchin- son. This Court met, also at Cambridge, on the 1 2th of November 1637. Before it, with John Winthrop pre- siding, and with only three sympathisers in the company of men composing it — John Coggeshall, Thomas Leverett, and William Coddington — Anne Hutchinson appeared to defend herself. The charges brought against her were : ( I ) "Of having troubled the peace of the commonwealth and churches." (2) " Of having divulged and promoted opinions that cause trouble." (3) " Of having joined in affinity and affection to those upon whom the Court has passed censure " [Wheelwright and others]. (4) " Of having spoken divers things prejudicial to the honour of the Churches and the ministers." (5) "Of having main- tained a meeting in your house, not comely in the sight of God, nor fitting your sex." She was further charged, absurdly, with having " broken the law against dishonouring parents " ; the " parents " in this case being the " fathers of the common- wealth." She was also charged with " seducing many honest persons " — " simple souls " — by " opinions known to be different from the Word of God," and with leading such persons to "neglect their families" and to "spend [i.e. waste] much time." To these points, marshalled by Governor Winthrop, the Deputy -Governor Thomas Dudley added other charges which are really "echoes" of Winthrop's. That " all was peace until you came " ; that " by venting strange opinions you have made parties, and now have a potent party in the country " ; and " that you have disparaged our ministers," which was really the sore spot. On all these points Mrs. Hutchinson, calm, clear- headed, and straightforward, was more than a match for CH. I A PRE-QUAKER MOVEMENT 17 her accusers, and soon forced the issue deeper. The Court next took up the real matter at issue — the question of the two types of religion — the covenant of Works and the covenant of Grace. Deputy-governor Dudley raised this point and declared that he could prove that Mrs. Hutchinson had said that " the Gospel in the letter and in words is only a covenant of Works," and that she had claimed that those not holding as she herself did — to inward experience — were in this lower stage or covenant.^ Whereupon Hugh Peters, the main witness to prove this point, came forward with the testimony, based on a private conference which the ministers had held with Anne Hutchinson, that she had said that Mr. Cotton alone preached the covenant of Grace, and that all the other ministers preached the covenant of Works, " knowing no more than the apostles did before the resurrection " \i.e. before enduement with the Holy Spirit] and that they did not have " the seal of Christ." Other ministers corroborated this testimony, and Deputy-governor Dudley pushed the charge a little further by insisting that she affirmed that " the Scriptures in the letter held forth only a covenant of Works," or as we should say to-day, are a part of externals, and not the primary matter of religion. She admitted having said so, and supported her point by quoting 2 Cor. iii. 6 : " The letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life." ^ It came out, in a speech of Hugh Peters, at the open- ing of the Court on the second day of the proceedings, that " the main thing against her is that she charged us with not being able ministers of the Gospel, and of being preachers of a covenant of Works."' A little later he insists again, that she said that " we ministers are not sealed with the spirit of Grace, that we preach in judgment, but not in experience!' " She spoke out plump that we were not sealed." * John Cotton, who was naturally in a most delicate and trying position, bore his testimony with much dignity, 1 Hutchinson, Massachusetts Bay, ii. 489. ^ Ibid. vol. ii. pp. 495-496. ' Ibid. vol. ii. p. 501. ^ Ibid. vol. ii. pp. 505-506. c i8 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i insight, and boldness. He said that Mrs. Hutchinson had not made such positive statements as were now being charged against her, that the brethren at the time of the conference had not taken her words " so ill as now," and that there was an actual difference between a religion of works, or letter, and one of the Spirit, pointing out that even the Apostles were for a time in the lower stage, without the witness of the Spirit, and in that stage they had been unable to preach the covenant of Grace — a religion of experience. He called to mind that Mrs. Hutchinson had said, ^'■You can preach no more than you know!' And he declared that by " the seal of the Spirit " she meant " the full assurance of Divine favour, witnessed by the presence of the Holy Spirit." ^ Anne Hutchinson herself, in a moment of rashness, now gave her enemies the key to her inner sanctuary, and lost her case by what Hugh Peters would call a " plump confession " that she sometimes received " revela- tions," had "openings," and "was given to see spiritual situations." " I bless the Lord," she exclaimed, " that He has let me see which was clear ministry and which was wrong. He hath let me distinguish between the voice of my Beloved and the voice of Moses." " Now," she continued solemnly, "if you do condemn me for speaking what in my conscience I know to be the truth, I must commit myself unto the Lord." This confession led to the following conversation : Mr. Newel. — How do you know that that (which was re- vealed to you) was of the Spirit ? Mrs. H. — How did Abraham know that it was God that bid him offer his son ? Dep.-Gov. — By an immediate voice. Mrs. H. — So to me by an immediate revelation. Dep.-Gov. — How ! an immediate revelation ? Mrs. H. — By the voice of His own Spirit in my soul.^ Here in this discussion we find the real nerve of the issue. Here was " a mere woman " who claimed direct connection with the fount of Life and Light, who insisted ^ Hutchinson, Massachusetts Bay, vol. ii. pp. 504, 505, cog. ^ Ibid. vol. ii. p. 508. cH. I A PRE-QUAKER MOVEMENT 19 that revelation is not closed, but that she herself has immediate openings like those given to Abraham. To those listening to her the claim sounded, as the wisest of them, Governor Winthrop, said, like the " most desperate enthusiasm in the world." To him, to them all, her " confession " seemed " a marvellous providence of God," a clear " mercy of God " vouchsafed to them. On her own testimony she had showed herself to be " under a devilish delusion," near kin to the worst enthusiasts of history — the Anabaptists.^ It was now a plain and easy matter to move straight toward her condemnation and sentence. Before sentence was pronounced, however, one valiant voice w^as raised in her behalf. William Coddington, seeing that judgment was about to be pronounced, defended her with what, under the circumstances, was rare boldness. He pointed out that the Court was acting unfairly in the double capacity of judge and accuser, and that the original charges against her had not been proven. He then took up the " special providence " of her own confession : " And now for that other thing which hath fallen from her occasionally by the Spirit of God ; you know that the Spirit of God witnesseth with spirits, and there is no truth in Scripture but God bears witness to it by His Spirit, therefore I would intreat you to consider whether those things alleged against her deserve censure." ^ " But," insisted Peters, conscious all the time of the real sore spot, " I was much grieved that she should say that our ministry was legal." " What wrong was there," asked Coddington, " to say that you were not able ministers of the New Testament or that you were like the apostles — methinks the com- parison was very good." ^ But Coddington was risking himself in vain ; her fate was already sealed, and Governor Winthrop proceeded to pronounce sentence. " If it be the mind of the Court that Mrs. Hutchinson is unfit for our society, and if it ' Hutchinson, Massachusetts Bay, vol. ii. p. 514. 2 Ibid, vol ii. p. 516. ' Ibid. vol. ii. p. ,519. 20 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i be the mind of the Court that she shall be banished out of our liberties and imprisoned until she shall be sent forth, let them hold up their hands." ^ All but three voted in the affirmative. The victim was now separated from her family and condemned to a semi-imprisonment in the house of the Rev. Thomas Welde at Roxbury, where she was hard beset with clerical inquisition, and where she underwent a good deal of mental depression.^ It is a matter of no importance that under this unbearable strain her clerical inquisitors drew from her certain "errors and heresies." In the spring of 1637 — 25th March — the Church of Boston proceeded to " excommunicate " her. All her powerful friends were silenced now. Governor Vane had gone back to England, glad to be out of the theo- logical tempest. Wheelwright was eating the hard bread of exile in New Hampshire. Coddington and his sympathisers had been forced out of the government and out of the colony. John Cotton must have passed many silent hours of inward anguish as he halted between the two issues, but he finally deserted his friend, who had singled him out as the one minister in the colony who clearly preached the covenant of Grace, and he swung over, clear over, to the safe side, with the other ministers, and bitterly lamented that he had been " abused and made a stalking-horse of." ^ He was selected to pronounce " admonition " against her, which he did, " with much detestation of her errors," though the awful sentence of excommunication was read by the pastor, Mr. Wilson r " In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the name of the Church, I do not only pronounce you worthy to be cast out, but I do cast you out ; and in the name of Christ I do deliver you up to Satan. I do account you from this time forth to be a heathen and a publican. I command you in the name of Jesus Christ and of this Church as a leper to withdraw yourself out of this congregation." As the outcast slowly found her way ^ Hutchinson, Massachusetts Bay^ vol. ii. p. 520. " It is important to note her physical condition — she was soon to give birth 10 a child. 3 Winthrop, vol. i. p. 304. cH. I A PRE-QUAKER MOVEMENT 21 down the aisle, to go out for ever into exile, Mary Dyer stepped forth from her seat, took her place by Anne Hutchinson's side and went out with her — one day to come back again ! Mrs. Hutchinson now found her way to the new colony which her friends had gone on ahead to found in the island of " Aquiday " — Aquidneck — now called the island of Rhode Island. This island was destined to be the shelter and safe nursery of Quakerism in the days of its early stress in the New World, and we must now briefly study the new, strange colony which owed its birth to the " Antinomian " turmoil in Massachusetts Bay.-' The new colony was founded by persons who were either banished for taking a sympathetic part in the Hutchin- son controversy, or who revolted against the heavy hand of authority in Massachusetts Bay.^ Winthrop says : " At this time the good providence of God so disposed that divers of the congregation, being the chief men of the Antinomian party, were gone to Narragansett to seek out a new place for plantation." ° The fact was that the Court which banished Wheelwright and con- demned Anne Hutchinson, also dealt vigorously with the citizens of Boston who had signed the petition in ' There were doubtless many things involved in this famous controversy. The subtle political issues between the party of Winthrop and the party of Vane I have not touched upon. The lukewarmness of the citizens of Boston, when the colony was girding itself for the Pequot war, was supposed by Winthrop and others to be due to the prevalence of the "new opinions" in religion. But it is clear, nevertheless, that the central trouble lay in these two points : The leaders of the new party had boldly criticised the ministers of the colony for being legal and not spiritual ; and secondly, they had insisted on the fact of present revelation as against the view that God's Word is found only in a Book. It was for these heresies that Wheelwright was forced to wander through the snow to Exeter, and it was for these heresies that Anne Hutchinson was flung out of the colony as a leper. These exiles had thus already struck the central issues which the Quakers forced to the front a score of years later. ' The Rhode Island Colony must be carefully distinguished from the Providence Colony, founded t)y Roger Williams, also an exile from the Massachusetts Colony. Roger Williams has the honour of being one of the brave path-breakers toward the light, and he was undoubtedly the first in the New World to annunciate clearly the doctrine of soul-liberty. I have no desire to detract from the fame which properly belongs to him, but it is a plain fact that the island colony in the southern end of Narragansett quickly out- stripped in importance the one founded at Providence, and it was here on this island of Aquidneck that the principle of spiritual freedom got its most impressive exhibition in the primitive stage of American history. ' Winthrop, vol. i. p. 311. 22 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i favour of Wheelwright. Twenty of the signers in fear " acknowledged their fault " and were forgiven ; the rest were "disarmed," in which list were a number of the founders of the little colony on Aquidneck — the persons " disposed by the providence of God to seek out a new place for plantation." ^ The little party sent John Clarke, with two companions, on ahead to locate the place of settlement and, with the advice and assistance of Roger Williams, with whom they took counsel, they decided upon Pocasset (now Portsmouth), on the island then called "Aquiday," now called "Rhode Island."^ On the 7th of March 1638, nineteen members of the new colony signed in Providence a civil compact for the incorporation of their new " Body Politick," and they proceeded to elect William Coddington, clearly the leader and foremost person in the little group, their Judge. The simple form of government, which was here initiated, was slightly modified in January 1639, when a plan was drafted which provided for " three elders " to assist the Judge, and they were to report their acts every quarter to the assembled freemen with this curious arrangement for veto : " If by the Body [of freemen] or any of them, the Lord shall be pleased to dispense light to the contrary of what by the Judge and Elders hath been determined formerly, that then and there it shall be repealed as the act of the Body." ^ In April 1639 the little colonial hive at Pocasset " swarmed " and formed a new town, which was named Newport, on the other edge of the island.* At first it was an independent settlement under a separate govern- ment, with Coddington for " Judge," Nicholas Easton, John Coggeshall, and William Brenton as " Elders," while the settlement at Pocasset chose William Hutchin- 1 Of the "founders " William Aspinwall was banished, John Coggeshall was disarmed and disfranchised, William Coddington and nine others were given leave to depart within three months, and were afterwards hurried off. 2 See John Clarke's " 111 Newes from New England," printed in ^Mass. Hist. Soc. Col. ii. The name was changed from Aquidneck to Rhode Island 13th March 1644. ^ Rhode Island Colony Records, i. p. 63. * Nicholas Easton built the first house in Newport. (See Narr. Hist, Reg- vol. viii. p. 240. ) CH. I A PRE-QUAKER MOVEMENT 23 son, husband of Anne, for Judge. The two settlements were united under one government in March 1640 with William Coddington of Newport as Governor, and William Brenton of Pocasset (at this time changed to Portsmouth) as Deputy-governor. A year later, namely in May 1641, the assembled citizens unanimously declared that " this Body Politick is a Democracie ; that is to say, it is in the Power of the Body of Freemen, orderly assembled, or the major part of them, to make Just Lawes by which they will be regulated." ^ Under the same date this memorable act was passed : " It is ordered that none bee accounted a delinquent for doctrine!' ^ In November of the same year it was decreed that the " Law of the last Court, made concerning Libertie of Conscience in Point of Doctrine be perpetuated." ^ And this colony, in the face of severe tests and difficulties, maintained this principle in practice.* In 1 64 1 the persons who composed the Newport settlement seem to have arranged themselves into two religious groups. One party, with Coddington, Cogges- hall, and Nicholas Easton as leaders, formulated views which seem extraordinarily akin to those later held by the Society of Friends ; while the other group, led by John Clarke, formed a Baptist Church. It is extremely difficult now to get the facts on these important points. Winthrop says, under date of 1641 : " Mrs. Hutchinson and those of Aquiday Island broached new heresies every year. Divers of them turned professed Ana- baptist,* and would not wear any arms,^ and denied all ^ Rhode Island Colony Records, i. 112. ^ Ibid. p. 113. ^ IHd. p. 118. * Cotton Mather gives this account of freedom of faith in the Rhode Island Colony : "I believe there never was held such a variety of religions together on as small a spot of ground as have been in that colony." " If a man had lost his religion he might find it at the general muster of the opinionists." " Rhode Island hath usually been the Gerizzim of New England." — Magnalia, ii. 520-521. ' The term "Anabaptist," used in such an account, hardly means more than that the person was a dissenter from the established faith and held strongly for inward experience in religion. See my Studies in Mystical Religion, chapter on " The Anabaptists " (London, 1909). ° Nicholas Easton was fined five shillings in 1639, for coming to meeting without his weapons. — Rhode Island Colony Records, i. 95. 24 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i magistracy among Christians, and maintained that there were no churches since those founded by the apostles and evangelists, nor could any be, nor any pastors ordained, nor seals adminis- tered, but by such, and that the church was to want these all the time she continued in the wilderness, as yet she was.''^ It is not probable from what we know that any of the persons prominent in this "spiritual circle" denied magistracy or were opposed to settled social order. It is probable that they did insist that religion must be an affair of experience and that a true church could not be established or maintained by persons who were "out of the life " and only externally religious. The real situation comes out somewhat clearer in another passage in Winthrop : "Other troubles arose in the island of Aquiday by reason of one Nicholas Easton, a tanner, a man very bold, though ignorant.^ He using to teach [i.e. taking upon himself to teach] where Mr. Coddington their Governor lived, maintained that man hath no power or will in himself, but as he is acted [upon] by God, and that a Christian is united to the essence of God."^ Winthrop undertakes to show, by inference, that this view of Easton's makes God the author of sin, and has blasphemous consequences. But Easton did not push his view to dangerous lengths and apparently held, exactly what Friends later held, that there is something of God in man, and that man becomes a truly " spiritual being " by reason of this Divine connection. Winthrop further says that Mr. Coddington, Mr. Coggeshall, and some others joined with Nicholas Easton, " while Mr. Clark [John Clarke], Mr. Lenthall and some others dissented, and publicly opposed, whereby it grew to such heat of contention that it made a schism." * There was, it plainly appears, thus differentiated here in Newport, fifteen years ^ Winthrop, ii. 46. Winthrop is here giving a description of what is known as the " Seeker" attitude (see Studies in Mystical Religion). It is likely that some of the group in Newport insisted that only spiritual persons can perform spiritual exercises. There is no evidence that they went further than this. ^ This is an instance of Winthrop's unfairness through prejudice. Easton was a man of high standing and excellent mental parts. He was three times President of the Colony, six times Deputy-Governor, and three times Governor. » Winthrop, ii. 48. * Winthrop, ii. 49. cH. I A PRE-QUAKER MOVEMENT 25 before the coming of the Quakers, a group of persons who were Quakers in everything but name.^ Even more striking, if anything, was the situation in Portsmouth. Letchford, who resided in New England " almost the space of four years " prior to 1 64 1 , and who spent some time in the Colony on Rhode Island, says, after commenting on the state of religion at Newport : "At the other end of the Island there is another town called Portsmouth, but no church [i.e. no established church] ; there is & meeting of some men who there teach one another and call it prophesie." ^ This looks as though a meeting was being held in Ports- mouth at this date in which the members spoke as they felt " moved " (for that is what " in the way of prophesie " means), exactly as the Quaker meeting was held a little later.^ ' It should be remembered that this was at least six years before George Fox began his religious activity in England. ^ hetchfoid's Flaitie Dealing {Boston reprint, 1868), p. 94. ^ We shall see in later chapters that there were other pre-Quaker circles in the colonies all ready to be merged into the wider Quaker movement as soon as it made itself felt on these shores. The "circles" at Salem and at Sandwich, Mass., were the most important ones. Mrs. Hutchinson did not live long enough to hear of the Quaker movement, for the spread of which she did much to prepare the way. Her husband, William Hutchinson, died in 1642, and soon after she moved with her family into the territory of the Dutch, settling near Hell Gate in West Chester Co. , New York. Here in the autumn of 1643 she was murdered by Indians, who ' ' slew her, and her family, her daughter and her daughter's husband, and all their children," except a little girl who was carried into captivity. This calamity was hailed in the Puritan Colony as a " Divine Judgment." (See Welde's Jiise, Reign, and Ruin, and Mather's Magnalia.) Anne Hutchinson's sister, Catharine Scott, and her family, formed the nucleus of the original group of Friends in Providence. CHAPTER II THE QUAKERS AT THE GATES The Quaker message had first been heralded in London by women, and the first attempt to win over the Uni- versities of England to the " truth," as the early Quakers persistently called their Gospel, was made by women. So too, the first Quakers to reach the American hemisphere were women, who in deep seriousness regarded themselves as apostolic messengers under divine call and direction. They were Mary Fisher and Ann Austin. Their first place of landing and of missionary activity was the island of Barbadoes, where they arrived near the end of the year 1655. The island of Barbadoes was, during the seventeenth century, the great port of entry to the colonies in the western world, and it was during the last half of that century, a veritable "hive" of Quakerism. Friends wishing to reach any part of the American coast, sailed most frequently for Barbadoes and then reshipped for their definite locality. They generally spent some weeks, or months even, propagating their doctrines in " the island " and ordinarily paying visits to Jamaica and often to Antigua, Nevis, and Bermuda. Large Friends' meetings rapidly sprang up on all these islands. Barbadoes had been first occupied by the English in 1 60 5, and had submitted to the authority of the commonwealth in 1652. Sugar-making had, as early as 1640, become its great industry, being carried on by negro slaves who had been brought from Africa, and the island enjoyed unrestricted trade. It was just now at the height of its prosperity and large fortunes were being made there. It is estimated 26 CH. II THE QUAKERS AT THE GATES 27 that there were 25,000 inhabitants, and not less than 10,000 slaves. Of the inhabitants Clarendon said they were principally men " who had retired thither only to be quiet and to be free from noise and oppressions in England." Among these quiet, comfortable, prosperous people, the two "publishers of the truth" as we have seen, came in 1655, and they spent about six months here publishing their message. Mary Fisher was, at the time of her visit, a young, unmarried woman of about twenty-two years of age, adorned with somewhat uncommon " intellectual faculties " and marked by " gravity of deportment." She had been a servant in the home of the Tomlinsons of Selby in Yorkshire, and had been " convinced " of the truth of the Quaker message in the early years of Fox's ministry, and went forth as a minister herself in 1652. The first two years of her ministry were mostly spent in York Castle, where she endured two terms of im- prisonment, one of sixteen months and one of six. Between these two imprisonments, Mary Fisher, with a woman companion, undertook the hazardous mission of carrying the Quaker message to the students of Cambridge University. The students jeered and derided, " with froth and levity." The mayor of the city ordered the women to be stripped to the waist and " whipped at the market cross till the blood ran down their bodies," a sentence which was cruelly executed, while the women prayed the Lord to forgive their persecutors.^ Little is known of the life of Ann Austin, previous to her American visit, except that she was already " stricken in years," the mother of five children, apparently a resident of London, and plainly enough valiant and ready for the perils of her dangerous calling. Their work m Barbadoes seems to have been successful. As they were leaving the island for their hazardous venture in New England, Mary Fisher wrote to her friends in England : " Here is many convinced and many desire to know the way." On their return, after they had been flung out of Boston, ^ Besse, Sufferings of the Quakers (London 1753), vol. i. p. 85. 28 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i they continued the work in Barbadoes, and had their faith and zeal well rewarded. Lieutenant-Colonel Rous, a wealthy sugar-planter, and his son John were the first to identify themselves with Friends and to join the movement. They were in fact the first persons in the West Indies to become Quakers. The son, John Rous, came forward almost immediately in the ministry, and before the year was out had issued a characteristic Quaker tract : " A Warning to the inhabitants who live in pride, drunkenness, etc., also something to the Rulers, that they rule rightly and do justice on the wicked." ^ In the month of July 1656, Master Simon Kempthorn, in his ship Swallow, sailing from Barbadoes, brought those two women into Boston harbour. Governor Endicott was at that moment absent from the city, and Deputy-governor Richard Bellingham found himself con- fronted with an " extraordinary occasion." He seems to have been equal to it. He ordered the women to be kept on the ship while their boxes were searched for books containing " corrupt, heretical, and blasphemous doctrines." One hundred such books were found in their possession. These were seized and burned in the market-place by the common hangman.^ This being done the women were brought to land and committed to prison on the sole charge of being " Quakers," deprived of light, and of all writing materials, though as yet no law had made it a punishable offence to be a Quaker. A fine of five pounds was laid upon any one who should speak with them, and, to make assurance doubly sure, their prison window was closely boarded up. They were furthermore " stripped stark naked," and searched for " tokens " of witchcraft upon their bodies.' There was one bright spot in the dark experience. One man (who was evidently Nicholas Upsall) came to the prison and offered gladly to pay > Letter to Margaret Fell. — Swarthmore Collection, in Devonshire House, London, i. 66. ^ Snow, in his History of Boston (1825), says that Nicholas Upsall, a citizen of Boston, endeavoured to buy these Quaker books. — Snovir, op. cit. p. 196. ' See Bishop's New England Judged (London, 1703), p. 12. Henry Fell, in a letter to M. Fell, gives an account of the searching of these women as suspected witches. — Swarthmore Collection, i. 66. CH. n THE QUAKERS AT THE GATES 29 the fine of five pounds if he might be allowed to have conversation with the Quaker prisoners.^ After they had been kept five weeks in confinement under these extraordinary conditions, the master of the vessel which brought them was put under a bond of one hundred pounds, to see that they were transported to Barbadoes, and he apparently was compelled to pay the costs of their transportation.^ The Boston jailer had to content himself with their bedding and their Bibles for his prison fees. Governor Endicott, on his return, remarked that if he had been at home they would not have got away without a whipping. George Bishop, whose book is the main source of our information on the details of the New England " invasion " asks of the magistrates the pertinent question : " Why was it that the coming of two women so shook ye, as if a formidable army had invaded your borders."^ The answer, given at the time, was a string of vague charges and hysterical epithets. A clearer answer can perhaps be given at this distance and from the perspective of historical review. It must be said in the first place that the judgment of the officials, and particularly of the ministers, in the Massachusetts Colony had been seriously prejudiced by rumours and accounts that had preceded the arrival of the two women. Anti-Quaker pamphlets had already come from the press in great numbers, and they were unsparing in their accounts of the new " heresy." Some of these pamphlets were written by ministers who, either before or after the publication of their attack, were settled in New England and were in high repute there. Francis Higginson, the author of A Brief Relation of the Irreligion of the Northern Quakers, published in 1653, and one of the earliest polemics against Friends, was a New Englander. Thomas Welde, who had been a ' See Henry Fell's letter to M. Fell. — Swarthmore Collection, i. 66. " The master of the vessel which took them to Barbadoes was put under a bond of one hundred pounds to land them there and not to suffer any persons in the Colony to speak with them in the harbour before they sailed. ' New England fudged, p. 7. 30 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i minister in high favour in Massachusetts, and who had taken a very prominent part in the heresy trials and expulsion of Anne Hutchinson and her friends, was the principal author of two violent anti-Quaker Tracts, The Perfect Pharisee under Monkish Holinesse, and A further Discovery of that Generation of Men called Quakers, issued in 1653 and 1654. Samuel Eaton, author of The Quakers confuted, published in 1654, was brother of Theophilus Eaton, a governor of New Haven, and had been a preacher in New England. Christopher Marshall of Woodkirk, who had been James Nayler's pastor, and who poured forth a torrent of abuse upon George Fox and the Quakers, had intimate associations with Boston, where he had been a member of John Cotton's Church, and had been trained in the ministry by that famous teacher.'' The writings of trusted leaders such as these had made Quakerism an accursed thing before any Quaker crossed the Atlantic. The Quakers were already catalogued as a new type of religious Enthusiasts, like the sect which for a hundred years had made the name of Miinster a word of terror.^ In fact one of the Massachusetts " Declarations " against the Quakers traces their pedigree directly to these fanatics of the century before : " The prudence of this Court was exercised in making provision to secure Peace and Order against their Attempts, whose design (we were well-assured by our own experience as well as by the example of their Predecessors in Miinster) was to undermine and ruin the same."* The allusion to Miinster comes out also in a Petition sent in 1 6 5 8 to the General Court for severe laws against the Quakers. The petitioners say : " Their [the Quakers] incorrigibleness, after so much means used both for their conviction and for preserving this place ^ See Transactions of the Cong. Hist, Soc, March 1903, p. 224. For Marshall's attacks on Fox, see Journal, i. 107. ^ A fanatical band of Anabaptists captured the city of Miinster in 1534, anil disturbed the world with their strange " Kingdom." 3 New England Judged, p. 3. cH. n THE QUAKERS AT THE GATES 31 from contagion, being such, as by reason of their malignant obduratices {sic], daily increaseth rather than abateth our fear of the spirit of Muncer [Miinster], or John of Leyden revived." ^ Nearly all the Massachusetts enactments against the Quakers refer not only to their " horrid opinions " and "diabolical doctrines," but also to their dangerous leaven of " mutiny, sedition and rebellion," their subtle designs to "overthrow the order established in Church and commonwealth." This was, as we in this calm genera- tion know, a pure figment of the imagination, but it was, nevertheless, a live and propulsive idea then in the minds of the ministers and magistrates, and must be reckoned with in judging their treatment of the Quakers.^ There was always hanging over the Puritan colonists, another terror, to us very pale and remote, to them very real and imminent — the terror of witchcraft ; the awful power of Satan to transform a human person into a tool of malice and mischief. Bellingham's own sister-in- law had been executed as a witch only a few months before the arrival of these two Quaker women, and the eager search of their naked bodies for "tokens" was very significant ; and if a mark or blemish had been found on their bodies, something besides books might have burned in the market-place. There can be no doubt that these " phobias," these unreasoned and morbid delusions, were potent factors in predisposing the authorities to a sternly hostile attitude toward these harmless women missionaries. But there was a deeper and solider ground for their hostile attitude than these "obsessing ideas" furnish. These women were the bearers of a type of religion sharply at variance, and in fact irreconcilable with that already established in Massachusetts. Feeble as they were, they were the ^ Massachusetts Archives^ vol. x. p. 246. ^ This hysterical fear of " designs to overthrow the established order " was a prominent element in the treatment of the Hutchinson party, though there was not the slightest ground for it. Cotton Mather, even after overwhelming evidence that the Quakers had no designs against established order, still in his day called them " dangerous villains. " — Magnolia, vol. ii. p. 256. 32 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i vanguard of an army, and they represented a new spiritual empire in array against the spiritual empire which the Puritan in stern consecration was building. There was no delusion in the statement of the Court that "the tenetts and practices of the Quakers are opposite to the orthodoxe received opinions and practices of the godly" i.e. of the Massachusetts ministers.^ We must try to see fairly and honestly what these "tenetts and practices " were. The central truth on which the Quaker of that period staked his faith and to which he pledged his life, was the presence of a Divine Light in the soul. It is an important historical fact that every Quaker in 1656 held this inward Light in the Soul to be the essential truth of religion.^ God, they said, has placed a Divine principle — something of Himself — in every man. This Light within condemns every step toward sin and evil, it approves every act of rectitude and every movement in the direction of righteousness. It is, in fact, a continuation now in many lives of that Christ, that Word of God and Light of the World and incorruptible Seed of God that was incarnate in One Life in Galilee and Judea.' As fast and as far, they said, as any one obeys this Light it leads him into all truth and into perfection of life, " sets him atop of the devil and all his works." " In this Eternal Life and Power," they said, "you continually grow up in the Life of God — the life that never dies."* Salvation was, thus, for them not a transaction but a transformation : not a forensic escape from the penalty due for their sins, but an actual deliverance from sin 1 Proceedings of the General Court held in Boston 19th of October 1658. ^ Cotton Mather says with much revulsion : ' ' They call men to attend to the mystical dispensation of a Light within, as having the whole of religion Contained therein." — Magnalia, vol. ii. p. 523. Neal in similar vein says : ' ' The Light within they affirmed to be sufficient to salvation without anything else." — Hist, of New England, vol. i. p. 322. 2 "This Seed and Birth of God in us is a living Principle; yea, it is a measure of the same Life and Spirit of Jesus Christ." — From George Keith's Immediate Revelation, p. 248. ' ' The Quakers believe both in a Christ without and a Christ within, but not as two Christs, but one and the same without as within. " — John Whiting, The Sword of the Lord Drawn, p. 5. * Edward Burrough, Works (1672) p. 75. CH. H THE QUAKERS AT THE GATES 33 itself. " To witness [i.e. experience] God within you, the Immanuel, the Saviour, God-with-you, is the whole salvation, there is no other to be expected than this. To witness that God dwells in us and walks in us is to be begotten by the Word of God, to be born of the Immortal Seed and to be a New Creature." ^ Not only did they insist that they possessed within themselves a Principle of moral illumination, a Power at war with sin in them, an Immanuel-God working in them to free them from all sin and to raise them to immortal life, but they claimed still further that they were the recipients of direct revelations. " I have had," said Fox, " a word from the Lord as the prophets and apostles had." They were simple, humble men and women, quite devoid of cheap ambitions, and singularly free from vain desire to gain mastery over their fellows by bold assumptions ; but they believed, with a conviction which no torture could shake, that the infinite God revealed His will in their souls. They held it for certain that they moved under orders from above, and that even in matters of seemingly slight importance they were guided as by a heavenly vision. One of the men who was called to pass through the martyr-baptism on Boston Common has left this simple, straightforward account of his " call " : "In the beginning of the year 1655, I was at the plough in the east part of Yorkshire in Old England, near the place where my outward being began, and as I walked after the plough, I was filled with the Love and the presence of the Living God which did ravish my heart when I felt it ; for it did increase and abound in me like a living stream, and the Love and Life of God ran through me like precious ointment giving a pleasant smell, which made me stand still ; and as I stood a little still, with my heart and mind stayed on the Lord, the Word of the Lord came to me in a still small voice, which I did hear perfectly, saying to me, in the secret of my heart and conscience, 'I have ordained thee a prophet unto the Nations.' " ^ ^ Burrough, A General Epistle to the Saints. "^ From a letter of Marmaduke Stephenson written from Boston Prison. — New England Judged, pp. 131-133. D 34 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i Similar accounts of experiences, believed to be " open- ings " of call and guidance, could be given from almost every Quaker pamphlet of that period, and there can be no question that the leading Friends of that date felt themselves to belong to the order of prophets and apostles.^ This faith and expectation created the peculiar type of meeting, known as "the meeting for worship," ■ which was one of the most unique features of the Quakerism that was now knocking for admission at the port of Boston. The members sat down in silence, with no ordained minister, with no prearrangements, no preparation for vocal service of any sort. They believed that sensitive souls could become aware of celestial currents, and that no words should be spoken in prayer or ministry until the lips were divinely moved. It was a bold experiment, an attempt to realise the prophetic ideal of Jeremiah that there should be a new Israel, with God's law in their inward parts, and with His will written in their hearts.^ It meant nothing less than the claim that revelation is continuous, and that by the work of the Divine Spirit there is a true apostolic succession. Another bold feature of this new religion was the absence of all sacraments. The sacraments are " shadows," they said ; Christ came to bring men to realities, and they were satisfied that they had found the realities. " The Spirit of God changes the ground {i.e. nature] of the soul, and transmutes it into His own nature, while all those things which men strive so much about are but shadows." ^ " There is," says another of their leaders, " a spiritual communion which reaches beyond all ^ The inference which their opponents drew was that they denied, or even discarded the Holy Scriptures, and they were almost invariably "examined" on this point. As a matter of fact, they never denied or discarded the Scriptures ; they simply denied that they were the only Rule of faith and practice ; since, they insisted, the Light of Christ in the heart in conjunction with the Scriptures is most certainly a guide and rule. They were also supposed to be very unsound on the doctrine of the Trinity, and they were frequently ' ' tested " on this article of faith. They generally gave this discreet if somewhat inconclusive answer : "The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit we own \i.e. believe in], but a Trinity of Persons the Scriptures speals not of ! " See Humphrey Norton's Ensign, p. 8. = Jer. xxxi. 33-34. • ^ Francis Howgil, Works (1676), p. 53. CH. II THE QUAKERS AT THE GATES 35 visibles and is above all mortal and fading things." " The Lord " is the mighty claim of still another, " hath brought me into a life which I live by the springing up of life within me." It was, thus, a religion of first-hand experience, based primarily not on historical happenings but on inward events. Its messengers declared that they had found the perennial springs of Life, and they claimed that these springs were bubbling within their own souls. In the power and joy of this " inward bubbling," the Quaker felt a certainty of his election which the Puritan did not have. " As I was walking in the fields," says Fox, " the Lord said unto me, ' Thy name is written in the Lamb's book of life,' and as the Lord spoke it I believed." ^ " The Lord said unto me," writes William Robinson just before his execution in Boston, " ' thy soul shall rest in ever- lasting peace and thy life shall enter into rest.' " ^ This note of certainty rings through all the writings of the first Friends. " We are raised from the dead, we are born of the Immortal Seed, and we have entered into God's Eternal Life — the Life that never dies," is the constantly recurring testimony. John Fiske, who more than any other historian of Colonial America has succeeded in understanding the Quaker position, very truly says : "The ideal of the Quakers was flatly antagonistic to that of the settlers of Massachusetts. The Christianity of the former was freed from Judaism as far as was possible ; the Christianity of the latter was heavily encumbered with Judaism. The Quaker aimed at complete separation between Church and State; the government of Massachusetts was patterned after the ancient Jewish theocracy in which church and state were identified. The Quaker was tolerant of differences in doctrine ; the Calvinist regarded such tolerance as a deadly sin. For these reasons the arrival of a few Quakers in Boston in 1656 was considered an act of invasion and treated as such." ^ Even more obnoxious to the Puritan, certainly to the ^ Journal, voL i. p. 35. '^ Letter from Wm. Robinson written in Boston Prison 19th of 8th month 1659. ^ Fiske, Dutch and Quaker Colonies, vol. ii. p. 112. 36 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i Puritan divines, than their ideals or than their theology was the Quakers' estimate of official ministers. They could be as tender as a woman toward any types of men who were low down, hard pressed and sore bestead, but they were relentless against what they called "hireling ministry." They used very vivid phrases to describe it, and they were as intolerant of it as the writer of Deuteronomy had been of the idolatry of his day. They hewed at it as fiercely as Samuel had hewed Agag. Quakerism was, one sees, a type of religion at every point in sharp contrast with that which the Puritans had established in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. They were, as has been said, two different spiritual empires. The leaders were incapable of understanding each other, and there was foredoomed to be a clash with tragic consequences. We shall dwell as little as possible on the tragedy, and we shall endeavour to understand the attitude of the persecutors as well as undertake to bring to clear light in these pages the mission of the Quakers in the New World and the type of their religion. Two days after Ann Austin and Mary Fisher, without bedding and without Bibles, sailed out of Boston harbour, that is, August 7th, 1656, a ship carrying eight Quakers — "pretty hearts, the blessing of the Lord with them and His dread going before them " ^ — sailed in. They were Christopher Holder, a valiant apostle of New England Quakerism, John Copeland, Thomas Thurston, William Brend, Mary Prince, Sarah Gibbons, Mary Wetherhead, and Dorothy Waugh. With them also came from Long Island a man by the name of Richard Smith, of whom we shall hear later. Officers of the Commonwealth were sent on board the ship to search their boxes for " erroneous books and hellish pamphlets," ^ 1 Letter of Francis Howgil in Caton Collection of MSS. 2 Humphrey Norton's New England's Btisign, p. 8. The title-page of Nm England: s Ensign reads : It being the account of Cruelty, the professor's pride and the articles of their faith signified in characters written in blood, etc. This being an account of the sufferings sustained by us in New England (with the Dutch) the most part of it in these two last years 1657, 1658. Written at sea by us whom the wicked in scorn call Quakers in the second month of the year 1659. London, 1659. CH.II THE QUAKERS AT THE GATES 37 and the Friends, after the examination of their views on the Divine Nature and the Scriptures, were lodged in the prison vacated two days before — a prison which. Bishop says, addressing the magistrates in 1660, "ye have supplied with the bodies of the saints and servants of Jesus, for the most part ever since : scarce one taken out, but some one or other put into his room." ^ The examination above referred to gave the prisoners their one chance of delivering the message for which they had come, though the soil on which the seed fell was not likely to be of a very receptive sort. One of the Boston ministers (Humphrey Norton says it was John Norton) during the examination quoted the passage from 2 Peter, " we have a more sure word of prophecy," ^ to prove that the Scriptures are the only rule of faith and sole guide of life. This was the Quaker's master-text and the prisoners at once accepted the challenge. They forced the minister to admit that the passage referred to the Word of God manifested within the soul when the spiritual day dawn has come and the Day Star has risen in the heart. "Where is the 'dark place' of which the text speaks?" John Norton asked William Brend. " It is under my hand," answered the old Friend, with his hand on his breast. The Friends then turned questioners and asked John Norton whether the Eternal Word was a suffi- cient rule and guide or not. He said " Yea." He was then asked whether it was his rule and guide. He replied that it was when he was rightly guided. The magistrates then cried out to know what was the difference between him and the Quakers ! As the examination came to an end Governor Endicott, now home from his journey, made the significant remark : " Take care that you do not break our ecclesiastical laws, for then you are sure to stretch by a halter." ' They were kept for eleven weeks in close confinement, deprived of all material comforts, and frequently examined by the ministers of the Colony. At the end of this period ^ New England Judged, p. 41. ^ 2 Peter i. 19. ' Ensign, p. 9 ; New England Judged, p. 10. 38 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i the master of their vessel, though somewhat recalcitrant, and citing his rights as a citizen to convey freeborn Englishmen whithersoever he would, was compelled under a bond of ^500 to transport the eight Quakers back to the mother country. One of the most interesting episodes of their imprisonment was the correspondence carried on between them and Samuel Gorton of Warwick, Rhode Island. He himself had endeavoured to expound a mystical religion, and had suffered much for his doctrines. He had been banished from Massachusetts and had founded a tiny colony at Warwick, under the patronage of the Earl of Warwick, where he and his followers found peace, and he seems to have conceived the idea of opening his colony as a base of activity for the Quakers. His first letter is dated i6th September 1656, and is addressed "To the Strangers and out-casts, with respect to carnall Israel, now in prison at Boston, for the name of Christ." He writes : " The report of your demeanour .... as also the errand you come upon hath much taken my heart, so that I cannot withhold my hand from expressing its desires after you. That present habitation of yours ourselves have had a proof of from like grounds and reasons that have possessed you thereof, unto which in some measure we still remain in point of banishment under pain of death, out of these parts. . . . No doubt but the bolts will fly back in the best season, both in regard of your- selves and us." Then after some odd and peculiar advice to them, and comments upon his own buried condition " in a corner of the earth grudged even as burying-place," he adds : " But our God may please to send some of his Saints unto us to speak words which the dead hearing them shall live. I may not trouble you further at this time, onely if we knew that you have a mind to stay in these parts after your enlargement (for we hear that you are to be sent back to England) and what time the ship would saile, or could have hope the Master would deliver you, we would endeavour to have a Vessell in readinesse, when the Ship goeth out of harbour, to take you in, and set you where you may enjoy your liberty." . . . "In Spirit cleave unto CH. II THE QUAKERS AT THE GATES 39 Him (as being in you) who is ever ttie same all sufficient : In whom I am yours, Samuel Gorton." 1 The Friends wrote a long and appreciative answer to this friendly letter, beginning with the salutation : "In that Measure [of Light] which we have received, which is eternall, we see thee and behold thee and have onenesse with thee." They then declare that their minds are set to stay in Massachusetts — "we are unwilling to go out of these parts, if here we could be suffered to stay, but we are willing to mind the Lord, and," they add, " if He in His wisdome shall raise thee up, and others for that end, we shall be willing to accept it." ^ They were, however, prevented from accepting his offer because the captain was under bond to take them to England, and to land them nowhere else. Richard Smith, a little later, was sent home to Long Island by sea, lest by any chance he might spread the contagion of his heresy, if he were allowed to go by land. But in spite of all these precautions to keep the commonwealth immune, there were positive signs of infection. There was living at this time in Boston an honest, independent-minded man, already well ad- vanced in years, named Nicholas Upsall. He was, in the language of the time, " sober, and of unblameable conversation," and, though diligent, his inward longings for the refreshment of his soul were unsatisfied. He heard, with the rest, of the arrival of the two Quaker women, and he tried to save the hundred books which were doomed to go up in smoke, but the report of their doctrines interested and impressed him rather than dis- turbed him. He heard that the women were being starved in the prison, and he resolved that they should be fed. By the payment of five shillings a week, he induced the jailer to let him feed them and throughout their imprisonment they ate his provisions. As events pro- ^ Gorton's Antidote Against the Common Plague of the World. Printed in Rhode Island Historical Collection, vol. ii. ^ Their letter is also printed in the Antidote. Gorton also wrote a second letter in which he notes that ' ' God hath frustrated our desired design we doubt not but for the best." 40 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i gressed he was carried on with them farther than he had expected. While the eight Quakers were in prison, the General Court of Massachusetts, with the sanction of the "Commissioners of the United Provinces," passed their first law against the Quakers — " a cursed sect of heretics who take upon themselves to be immediately sent of God, and infallibly assisted by the Spirit."^ The law enacted a fine of ;£^ioo upon any master of a sailing craft who should bring a Quaker to the Colony, and a fine of £$ upon any one who should bring into the jurisdiction any Quaker book, or conceal one in his house.^ It was further enacted that if by any means a Quaker should make his way into the Colony, he should be arrested, whipped, committed to the house of correction, kept con- stantly at work, and prevented from having conversation with any one until he was once more out of the jurisdiction. While this law was being proclaimed through the streets of Boston, preceded by beat of drum, the old man Nicholas Upsall, standing in front of his own door, raised his voice in protest. He was brought before the court, and here, " in tenderness and love," he solemnly warned the magistrates against the course they were pursuing. He was fined :^20 and banished from the Colony, spending the winter of 1656 in Sandwich in the Plymouth Colony, and making his way in the spring to that haven of rest for persecuted Christians, the island of Rhode Island, where he received a kindly welcome from the citizens of the Aquidneck Colony.* His tale of hardship won the hearts of the Indians, who were unsophisticated in theology. One of the chiefs called him " friend," and offered to build him a comfortable house, if he could accept his hospitality, commenting with instinctive insight on the old man's persecutors : "What a God have the English who deal so with one another over the worship of their God." * ^ Colony Records of Massachusetts, vol. iv. part i. p. 277. 2 Ibid. p. 308. ^ The Order fining Nicholas Upsall ' ' for reproaching the honoured magis- trates, and speaking against the law made and published against the Quakers," is in Colony Records of Massachusetts, vol. iv. part i. p. 279. * The Ensign, p. 14. cH. II THE QUAKERS AT THE GATES 41 Nicholas Upsall became fully convinced, and accepted the truth which the Quakers taught. He is thus the first fruit of the planting in New England, the first citizen of Massachusetts to join his lot with the Quakers. The knocking at the gates had thus begun ; the next year, 1657, was to witness something like an incipient " invasion." We must now return for a brief examination of the progress of the work in the West Indies ; for the de- velopment of Quakerism there is bound up essentially with the spread of the new faith on the American continent, George Rofe, an important Quaker traveller, writing from Barbadoes as early as 1661 calls this island " the nursery of the truth." ^ So in fact it was, for it . sent a small army of missionaries, strange as it sounds to-day, to Massachusetts, and one of the Boston martyrs, William Leddra, came from this " nursery of truth." Besse gives a list of two hundred and sixty Friends who suffered persecution in Barbadoes.^ Henry Fell, of Furness, reached Barbadoes in October 1656, and he gives a graphic account of the situation as he found it. " Truly Mary Fisher is a precious heart, and hath been very serviceable here, so likewise hath John Rous and Peter Head, and the Lord hath given a blessing to their labours, for the fruits thereof appear, for here is a pretty many people convinced of the truth, among whom the Lord is placing His name. They meet together in silence in three several places in the island." Fell at once threw himself into the service, and crossed controversial swords with Joseph Salmon,^ a leading Ranter, already known to George Fox. Fell says that he had never met any one who had the for^n of truth in words so well as Salmon : he got away with the great people who protected him whenever the Quaker began questioning him, and many were so bewitched with him that they would hear nothing against him. The ^ Letter in the Stephen Crisp Collection, Devonshire House, No. 102. ^ Besse's Sufferings, vol. ii. pp. 278-351. ' For Salmon, see my Studies in Mystical Religion, pp. 472, 475-477. 42 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i Governor, a great friend of Lieutenant-Colonel Rous, was moderate towards Friends. He took no offence at John Rous's " warning," or at Henry Fell's hat or " thouing " of him ; as for Friends' lives, he said they were inoffensive and unblameable, but their judging of others he could not bear. William Dewsbury, one of the foremost of the builders of Quakerism in England, wrote letters both to the Governor and to the Lieutenant-Colonel, a circum- stance which shows the close interest with which the growth of a Quaker community in Barbadoes was followed in the mother-country. Fell found the morals of the island poor, the people often " filthy," and some of the ministers notorious drunkards. He tried again and again to speak in the churches, but they were so guarded by the " rude multitude," that he always found himself ejected from the building before he had uttered more than a few words. Many were convinced and came to meetings, but it was hard to persuade them to take up the cross and avow themselves Friends. Four or five meetings a week were attended by Fell and Rous, and convincement followed.^ Henry Fell, after trying in vain to get passage to New England, for the master of the ship refused to carry him, returned to England in the autumn of 1657, reaching London after capture by the Spaniards, and a journey through France to Rochelle, but only to return a little later to promote the work in Barbadoes. John Rous was the only ministering Friend left in Barbadoes, and he was eager to get passage for New England. He writes, how- ever, " here are some precious Friends, which, I know, if there were none in the ministry with them, will stand witnesses for God against the world here." ^ But a few months later, Peter Evans of Barbadoes reported that, in the absence of ministers, coldness had got in and there was need for some who could declare the testimony of truth with authority.^ A number of Friends, including Henry ' These particulars are taken from an important series of Henry Fell's letters in the Swarthmore Collection. " To Margaret Fell, 2nd July 1657, Swarthmore Collection, i. 80. ' To George Fox, 28th April 1658, Swarthmore Collection, iii. no. cH. 11 THE QUAKERS AT THE GATES 43 Fell, were in the island the following year, and we hear of growing meetings and many convincements. Work was begun in several other of the West Indian plantations though we have few details. Early in the year 1656 Mary Fisher, John Rous, and Peter Head had paid a visit to the island of Nevis and planted the seed there. John Bowron, of Cotherstone in Durham, after carrying the Quaker message to the Orkneys, embarked there for the West Indies, and in the years 1657 and 1658 visited Surinam, then an English plantation under Lord Willoughby. There he travelled for several hundreds of miles among the natives, who were mostly naked, and he was listened to with respect as " a good man come from far to preach the white man's God." " He went to their sort of worship, which was performed by beating upon holly-trees, and making a great noise with skins, like a sort of drums, and he declared the word of the Lord among them by an interpreter . . . and spake to their kings, who were arrayed with fish-shells hung about their necks and arms, and they spake to him in their language and confessed he was a good man come from far to preach the white man's God." 1 This was the earliest piece of what we should now call Foreign M.issionar^__si:Qr]i. Two Friends visited 'Jamaica, whicfi~had been captured from the Spaniards in May 1655 by Admiral Pen n, the father of William Penn. As an English plantation it was just making headway against disease and the Spaniards when its capable Acting- Governor, Colonel Edward D'Oyley, asked advice of Secretary Thurloe as to the correct treatment of Quakers. The letter is a charming revelation of the fair-minded but perplexed official who finds the real Quaker very different from the portrait drawn in malicious public prints. "There are some people," he writes,^ "lately come hither called Quakers, who have brought letters of credit and do disperse books amongst us. Now my education and judgment ^ Fiefy Promoted, vol. i. p. 234. "^ 28th Feb. 1657/8, Thurloe State Papers, vol. vi. p. 834. 44 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES ek. i prompting me to an owning of all that pretend any way to godliness and righteousness — whereof these people have a very great appearance — and the prints telling me that the heads of the people are contriving against the Government, and accounted conspirators against His Highness (so the book calls them), hath put me to some stand how to carry myself towards them, and humbly to seek your honour's directions, that my carriage in being tender to them, who are people of an unblameable life, and to whose acting I am a stranger, may not procure blame from him in whose service I am — being desirous to steer my course to the interest I serve and to appear very heartily and clearly His Highness's faithful subject." In 1660 Richard Pindar, of Ravenstonedale near Sedbergh, and George Rofe, of Halstead, carried the Quaker message to the Bermudas. They were received by many whose expectation was towards God,^ and were soon holding three or four meetings a week to the great torment of the priests. A public dispute with the ministers of the main island was arranged by the Governor, after which they were freely tolerated and meetings increased greatly in several places. Several settled meetings were begun, "at which many knew where to wait to receive the Lord's secret strength." The growth of Quaker communities in the West Indian plantations, especially in Barbadoes, was followed with keen interest by English Friends. It shows the moral alertness of Fox's mind that as early as the year 1657 he addressed an epistle " to Friends beyond sea that have Blacks and Indian Slaves." In this he points out that God hath made all nations of one blood and that the gospel is preached to every creature under heaven, " which is the power that giveth liberty and freedom and is glad tidings to every captivated creature under the whole heavens." And so, he says, " ye are to have the mind of Christ and to be merciful, as your heavenly Father is merciful."^ In such language as this we find the germs of the testimony which in after years the Society of Friends bore on the subject of slavery. 1 See Swarthmore Collection, iv. 39, containing documents from Finder, 171I1 August 1660, and from George Rofe somewhat earlier. ^ Fox, Epistle No. 153. CHAPTER III THE FOUNDERS OF NEW ENGLAND QUAKERISM Many famous ships have had their names imperishably woven into the story of the American colonies, and the coming of the precious human freight on the Mayflower, the Arbella, and the Welcome has profoundly shaped the current of western civilisation. But of all the ships which brought pioneer founders to these shores none ever brought passengers more bravely consecrated to the ideals for which they sailed, and none has left a stranger narrative of Divine guidance, than the ship Woodhouse, which brought the original " apostles " of Quakerism to New England. The captain's "log" is declared to be — " A true relation of the voyage undertaken by me Robert Fowler, with my small vessel called the Woodhouse, but performed by the Lord, like as He did Noah's Ark, wherein He shut up a few righteous persons and landed them safe, even at the hill Ararat." ^ The action of the Massachusetts authorities against Quakers had made shipmasters wary of that kind of passengers.^ They were very unprofitable cargo. It was evident that they must have a ship of their own if they were to carry out their designs in the New World. ^ There is a manuscript of this extraordinary ship's log, endorsed by George Fox, in the Devonshire House Library in London, A. R. B. MSS. i. ^ Soon after the banishment of the eight ministers, recorded in the last chapter, a ship brought Mary Dyer and Ann Burden to Boston, both of whom had become convinced of Quakerism in England. Mary Dyer's story will be told later. Ann Burden had come over to settle up the estate of her deceased husband, who had been a citizen of Boston. She, however, was not allowed to remain to collect her debts, and the master of the ship was compelled to carry her back. He was given the privilege of seizing a sufficient quantity of her goods to cover his charges, but he nobly declined to accept such an offer, 45 46 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i Go they must ; for, as one of them wrote, " the Lord's word was as a fire and a hammer in me, though in the outward appearance there was no likehhood of getting passage." ^ At this juncture of affairs, Robert Fowler of Bridlington, a Quaker convert of four years' standing, who had been " one of the first fruits unto God in the east parts of Yorkshire," felt it laid upon him to build a ship " in the cause of truth," and as he was building it, " New England was presented " before him. He was a member of Holderness Monthly Meeting, and the ancient minute book of that meeting quaintly says that "the power of the Lord wrought mightily in Robert Fowler, and others who gladly received the word of life," and it continues " the Lord anointed them with his Spirit, and that led them into truth and righteousness, and some were fitted to labour in his vineyard." The boat which he felt himself called to build was only a small craft, far too small for ocean service, but the builder was deeply impressed that the God of the waters could guide it, as He did Noah's Ark, and he brought it up to London and offered it for the hazardous voyage.^ Eleven Friends, " firmly persuaded of the Lord's call " to New England, were eagerly waiting for a means of passage, and they thankfully accepted what seemed to them a " providential ship." Six of them were of the former party, already expelled from Boston.' These were Christopher Holder, John Copeland, William Brend, Sarah Gibbons, Mary Wetherhead, and Dorothy Waugh. Christopher Holder at the time was a resident of Winterbourne in Gloucester- 1 Letter of Henry Fell to Margaret Fell, 19th of February 1657, in the .Swarthmore Collection i. 68. ^ There is a manuscript in the Swarthmore Collection (i. 397) which contains the following items of "Monies Disbursed for the Service of Truth." "To New England" — For Provisions for voyuge . Paid to the Master for part of his freight For bedding and other things In money To Wm. Brend ,, M. Wetherhead . , , Sarah Gibbons ^ Thomas Thurston, who was of the former party, took another way of reaching Boston, as we shall see ; Mary Prince found another field of service, no less romantic and no less hazardous, in the East. £.■^9 10 30 12 ■A a.? 4 4 I 10 8 2 4 10 cH. m THE FOUNDERS 47 shire, "a well-educated man of good estate," who had already been well tested in suffering for his faith, having passed a term of imprisonment in " ye gayle in Ilchester." John Copeland was also well educated, and, like Holder, in the early prime of life. He was a native of Holderness in Yorkshire. William Brend was, in the language of the time, " an ancient and venerable man," " known to many as one who feared God in his generation." He had come to manhood in the days of Queen Elizabeth, but was still of an iron constitution and an indomitable spirit. Sarah Gibbons was a young woman whose early history is obscure, and whose years of service were cut short by the untimely sinking of a canoe in which she was making a landing at Providence in 1659 — "but," writes one of her friends, " she was kept faithful to the end." Mary Wetherhead was a young woman from Bristol, who, after her short period of dangerous service in New England, was shipwrecked and drowned with two of her companions, Richard Doudney and Mary Clark. Dorothy Waugh had been a serving-maid in the family of John Camm of Preston Patrick, where she was " con- vinced and called to the work of ministry." ^ During the intervening period before her voyage in the Woodhouse, she had been in many jails in various parts of England. She was not as well equipped intellectually as her companions were, and she was apparently not over judicious,^ but she had an intensity of zeal and considerable power in ministry. The new volunteers were William Robinson, Humphrey Norton, Richard Doudney, Robert Hodgson, and Mary Clark. William Robinson was a London merchant, a young man of education, successful in his affairs, and possessed of a fine and lofty spirit, ready to endure to the death for his soul's vision of truth. Humphrey Norton first comes into notice in 1655. He had, before sailing in the Woodhouse, performed an extensive service in Ireland, where he had learned how to suffer severe persecution. He had, too, shown his fearless spirit in ' See First Publishers of Truth, p. 255. ^ Mary Prince writes to George Fox, " I was ensnared by D. Waugh, but I am out through the love of God." — Swarthmore Collection, iv. 58. 48 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i the proffer of himself as a substitute prisoner to take the place of George Fox who was lying in Launceston. In April 1656 he wrote to Fox: "The want of thy showing forth unto Israel lies now upon me," and he declares that he is ready to lay down his life for his imprisoned friend, and that he is going to Cromwell to offer himself body for body.^ He wrote, with the help of two other Friends, the earliest account we have of the first publishing of Quakerism in New England.^ Richard Doudney's life is unknown previous to his American visit, and there are no biographical details available. His friends describe him as " an innocent man who served the Lord in sincerity." Robert Hodgson is likewise an obscure character. The most impressive event of his life known to us is told in the chapter on the Planting of Quakerism in New York. There are hints in existing letters that he was not always wise in propagating the truth, and there are rumours that he " headed a rent in Rhode Island," but these mutterings of criticism and jealousy in the little band must not be taken too seriously, for they are too commonly the sins of the saints to create surprise here. Mary Clark was the wife of John Clark, a London tradesman, and had come into fellowship with Friends about the time of their rise in London. She had already endured much for her faith, and much was still reserved for her in America. William Dewsbury boarded the Woodhouse off the Downs, 3rd June 1657, and gave the band a word of encouragement. He wrote two days later to Margaret Fell: " They were bold in the power of the Lord and the life did arise in them .... many dear children shall come forth in the power of God in those countries where they desire to go." ' On the way to London from Holderness two of the sailors of the Woodhouse had been " impressed " for naval 1 Journal, i. 318. The letter is given in fall in the Cambridge Journal. ■^ H. Norton's New England's Ensign, 1659. ' Letter in the Caton Collection of MSS. in Bowden, vol. i. p. 68. cH. Ill THE FOUNDERS 49 service, and Robert Fowler was left with only two men and three boys to man his ship for the voyage. At Portsmouth, however, he succeeded in completing his crew, though the old sea-captains there remarked that they would not go to sea in such a small vessel if Fowler would give it to them. Fowler's " log " tells us in curious metaphorical language that while they were waiting at Portsmouth, " some of the ministers of Christ went on shore and gathered sticks, and kindled a fire and left it burning," which means that they made converts and started a meeting there. " At South Yarmouth again we went ashore and in some measure did the like," i.e. left more sticks burning. An interesting letter from William Robinson to Margaret Fell sent from Portsmouth, refers to the kindling of this fire, and indicates that two more Friends were expected for the voyage. They were probably Joseph Nicholson and his wife who reached New England later. ■* The letter says : "I thought it meet to let thee know that ye ship that carries friends to new ingland, is now riding in Portsmouth harbour : we only stay for a faire winde : ye two friends : ye man and wife, which thou tould me off when I was at Swarthmore, I heare nothing of their cominge to London as yet. " Robert Hotchin is with me at this place for we came heather this afternoon to have a meeting at this place seinge ye wind is at present contrary, but we intend if the Lord permitt to returne back again to ye ship to-morrow." ^ Finally, about the middle of June, " leaving all hope of help as to the outward," the little vessel struck out on its course. " The Lord caused us to meet together every day," the quaint narrative says, " and He Himself met with us, and manifested Himself largely unto us, so that by storms we were not prevented [from meeting] above three times in all our voyage," and in these meetings they believed that they had definite " openings " as to how to steer the ship. On one occasion, as they " were taking counsel of the ^ There is an entry in the Kendal accounts in June 1657 of expenses "for Joseph Nicholson and his wife for New England. " ^ Swarthmore Collection, iv. 126. E so QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i Lord, the word from Him was, 'Cut through and steer your straightest course and mind nothing but me.' " At another time when they believed themselves beset by men of war, Humphrey Norton, who seems to have been the " oracle " of the party, had a revelation in the morning that " they were nigh unto us that sought our lives " but with it came the assurance : '"Thus saith the Lord, ye shall be carried away as in a mist.' . . . Presently we espied a great ship making toward us, but in the very interim, the Lord God fulfilled his promise wonderfully to our refreshment." "Thus it was all the voyage," the log continues. "The faithful were carried far above storms and tempests, and we saw the Lord leading our vessel as it were a man leading a horse by the head,'^ we regarding neither latitude nor longitude \sic\, but kept to our Line \i.e. our Light] which was and is our Leader, Guide, and Rule."" Two openings of great comfort were granted to the little group which assured them that they were being guided toward the land they sought. The first inward sight came, as the narrative puts it : " When we had been five weeks at sea, when the powers of darkness appeared in the greatest strength against us, having sailed but about three hundred leagues, Humphrey Norton, falling into communion with God, told me that he had received a comfortable answer, and that about such a day we should land in America, which was even so fulfilled." The other opening came a little before land was sighted : " Our drawing had been all the passage," the account says, "to keep to the southward, until the evening before we made land, and then the word was, ' Let them steer northwards until the day following,' and soon after the middle of the day there was a drawing to meet together before our usual time and it was said to us that we should look abroad in the evening ; and as we sat waiting before the Lord, they discovered land." They found that they were " in the ' creek ' which led between the Dutch Plantations and Long Island, whither the movings of some Friends called them." ^ This was a common figure to express complete Divine guidance, William Edmundson says that he was brought to a place where he was needed, "by the good hand of God, as a horse is led by the bridle." cH. in THE FOUNDERS 51 " The power of the Lord fell much upon us and an irresistible word came unto us, ' That the seed in America shall be as the sand of the sea.' It was published in the ears of the brethren, which caused tears to break forth with fulness of joy." Robert Hodgson, Richard Doudney, Sarah Gibbons, Mary Wetherhead, and Dorothy Waugh, were put on shore at New Amsterdam (now New York City), "whither they had movings," and the rest of the party passed on towards Newport, meeting their closest danger in the passage through Hell-gate — a danger which, the "log" says, was revealed in a vision both to the master of the vessel and to Robert Hodgson, several days before. The little band of " apostles " finally arrived safely at Newport, the 3rd of August. It is evident that these spiritual Argonauts took themselves ' very seriously. The Lord " led their ship, as a man leads a horse by the head," and He steered their vessel " as He did Noah's Ark to the hill Ararat." Every danger was " opened " to them in advance, and they were landed where they wished to be. One sees at once that we are dealing here with " enthusiasts " and not with every-day matter-of-fact voyagers. They had no question that they were " sent," that they were "guided," that they were the Lord's prophets, and in this faith we shall see them meet their dangers and carry through their commission. This Fowler document, like many another writing of the Friends in this earliest period, contains many occurrences of a semi-miraculous sort. They are carried away from their enemies in a mist, and they are told how to steer even when they know little or nothing of latitude and longitude. Religious literature furnishes many illustrations of the way in which a group of persons living on the verge of ecstasy, and exalted by enthusiastic faith, read the miraculous into ordinary happenings, and are unaware of actions which they themselves perform in a kind of subconscious state. There is no necessary , reason to conclude that this " log " is consciously improved 1 by the writer of it ; it is almost certainly a naYve but honest account written by an enthusiast, who is so sure 52 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i of the Lord's leading that he unconsciously belittles his own knowledge of nautical affairs. Humphrey Norton's account of his own "conversion experience " gives us a pretty good glimpse of the type of persons we have before us. He says, speaking of his " convincement and call " : " In my distress — when gross darkness covered me — I heard a cry that Light was broken forth and that there was a measure of it given to every man, but so dark was I and so grossly blind, that what this Light was I knew not ; nor amongst all professors, priests nor others, had I ever heard it spoken of, nor preached for salvation. Then called I to question all that ever I had read or heard, to the last tittle of my old belief. . . . My desire to live justly and to enjoy God, set me to inquire after this new Light and what effect it had amongst such as did believe in it. I heard that it did convince of sin ; and, being believed in, obeyed and followed, led out of all manner of uncleanness. Then said I in my heart, if so, it should not want following, for I was weary of my sin, yea I loathed my life." "And believing in this Light ... I have obtained mercy, peace with God, redemption from all filthiness of flesh and spirit, have been made an heir to His kingdom, a member of His body, a minister of His Spirit, and an inheritor of His Eternal rest, blessed forever." ^ Rhode Island was the most favourable and receptive spot in North America for them to light upon. It had been preparing, as we have seen, through a score of years for exactly the seed that was now to be sown. Here at last was a little corner of the earth consecrated to freedom of belief and worship, where one could follow his inward Light without fear of dungeon or gibbet. A letter from Rhode Island was sent in 1658 to John Clarke, the Agent of the Colony, to secure a charter from the English Government, urging him to plead " that we may not be compelled to exercise any civil power over metis consciences, so long as human orders in point of civilisation are not corrupted and violated." The letter continues : " We have now a new occasion . . . because a sort of people called by the name of Quakers have come amongst us, and haw raised up divers who seeme at present to be of their spirit. . . . Wee have found noe just cause, to charge them with the breach of ' The Ensign, pp. 2-3. CH. Ill THE FOUNDERS 53 the civill peace, only they are constantly goeinge forth amongst them about us and vex and trouble them in poynt of religion and spirituall state, though they returne with many a fowle scarr in their bodies for the same." ^ Anne Hutchinson herself was dead, but those who had shared her views and had gone into exile with her were admirable material for a Quaker meeting. Mary Dyer, Anne Hutchinson's closest friend in her hour of hard trial, had just returned from England to her home in Rhode Island, having had her first taste of Boston jail on her landing. While in England she had become " convinced " of the truth of the Quaker message, had thrown in her lot with the new Society, and had already been recognised as a minister of that faith. She was thus a dynamic Quaker nucleus to begin with. Some of the foremost families among the founders of the Rhode Island Colony — William Coddington, Joshua Coggeshall, son of John, Nicholas Easton and his son John, and Walter Clarke, son of Jeremiah Clarke, an original founder, appear to have accepted the Quaker faith as soon as they heard it, and at once became pillars in the first Quaker meeting in the New World. With them came over to Quakerism, it would seem, a large number of the inhabitants of the island, and the pilgrims from the Woodhouse must have thought that their dream of a " seed like the sand of the sea-shore " was well on its way to be realised ! * Only four years from the time of ' Colony Records of Rhode Island, vol. i. pp. 396-397. ' Callender in his Historical Discourse says : "In 1657 some of the people called Quakers came to this Colony and Island ; and being persecuted and abused in the other Colonies, that together with the opinions and circumstances of the people here, gave them a large harvest ; many, and some of the Baptist Church [of which Callender was a member] embraced their doctrines and particular opinions, to which many of their posterity, and others, still adhere."— p. 118. John Rous, 7th Nov. 1657, writing from Rhode Island, challenged Governor Endicott to arrange for a meeting with the Massachusetts ofBcials for a free discussion of the Quaker faith, and he asks Endicott to send his answer to Nicholas Easton who was thus already a convinced Friend. — Ensign, p. 59. Peterson says, in his History of Rhode Island, under date of 1656 (it should be 1657): "This year some of the people called Quakers came to this Colony, being persecuted and abused in the other Colonies, and many of the principal inhabitants embraced their doctrines, among whom were William Coddington, Nicholas Easton and his two sons, Philip Shearman, Adam Mott, and many others (p. 36). 54 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i the landing of these " Argonauts " at Newport, an annual meeting was established on the island, to which the Friends, springing up in scattered parts of New England, largely through their labours, came year after year — a meeting which, under the name of " The Yearly Meeting for Friends in New England," has had a continuous history to the present day.^ The cordial reception which the settlers on Rhode Island gave the Quakers, and the formation here of a base of operations and a quiet retreat from the storms of persecution, at once aroused the Puritan colonies. They had formerly refused to admit Rhode Island as a member of the Union of New England colonies, but now they showed themselves eager for co-operation in the face of common danger which menaced their peace, if not their spiritual empire. On the I2th of September 1657 the Commissioners of the United Colonies, " being in- formed that -divers Quakers are arrived this summer at Rhode Island which may prove dangerous to the. Colonies," "thought meet to manifest their minds" in a letter to those in authority in Rhode Island. " We suppose," they wrote, " you have understood that last year a companie of Quakers arrived in Boston upon noe other account than to disperse theire pernicious opinions," and then they recount how by " prudent care " they have seen to it that " all Quakers, Ranters, and such notorious heretiques might be prohibited coming among ^ There seems no uncertainty about the year in which this meeting was established. George Bishop says: "About that time \i.e. 1661] the General Meeting at Rhode Island, about sixty miles from Boston, was set up and you [the inhabitants of Boston], made an Alarm that the Quakers were gathering together to kill the people and fire the town of Boston I " — New England Judged, p. 351. John Burnyeat also gives valuable testimony in his Journal. He writes : " I took shipping for Rhode Island, and was there at their Yearly Meeting in 1671 which begins the ninth of the Fourth month (June, new style) every year and continues much of a week, and is a General Meeting once a year for all Friends in New England." — Burnyeat's Journal (Barclay's reprint), p. 196. George Rofe appears to have been the ' ' beginner " of this Yearly Meeting. He was in New England in the summer of 1661 and he writes from Barbadoes of that visit : " We came in \i.e, landed] at Rhode Island, and we appointed a General Meeting for all Friends in those parts, which was a very great meeting and very precious, and continued four days together and the Lord was with His people and blessed them. There is a good seed and the seed will arise." — George Rofe to Richard Hubberthorne, A.R.B. Collection, No. 62 (Devonshire House, London). CH. Ill THE FOUNDERS 55 us " and that " such as arise from amongst ourselves " shall be " removed." " But," they continue, " it is by experience found that meanes will fall short without further care by reason of your admission and receiving of such, from whence they may have opportunity to creep in amongst us, or meanes to infuse and spread their accursed tenates to the great trouble of the colonies, if not to the subversion of the lawes professed in them." " To preserve us," this is their appeal, " from such a pest, the contagion of which within your colony were dangerous, we request that you take such order herein that your neighbors may be freed from that danger, that you remove those Quakers that have been receaved, and for the future prohibite their cominge amongst you." ^ The Rhode Island answer, signed by Benedict Arnold, President of the Colony, 13th October 1657, is a dignified refusal to swerve from the settled policy of toleration. "Our desires are," they say, "in all things possible, to pursue after and keepe fayre and loveing correspondence and entercourse with all the colonys," and they add that they will return all persons that " fly from justice in matters of crime " — " but as concerning these which are now among us, we have no law among us whereby to punish any for only declaring by words, their mindes and understandings concerning the things and ways of God, as to salvation and an eternal condition.^' ..." And as to the dammage that may in likelyhood accrue to the neighbor coUonys by theire being here entertained, we conceive it will not prove so dangerous as the course taken by you to send them away out of the country as they come among you." ^ This letter, above quoted, was sent by the " Court of Trials." Five months later the General Assembly of the colony sent a Letter to Governor Endicott of Massachusetts to be imparted to the Commissioners of the United Colonies in which the principle of freedom is again as stoutly asserted : " Freedom of conscience we still prize as the greatest hapines that man can posess in this world." Quakers, they say, as all other people who ' Records of the Colony of Rhode Island, i. 374-376. * Ibid. i. 376-378. S6 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i come to Rhode Island, must be subject to all civil duties and preserve peace and justice, and if the aforesaid Quakers fail in these respects "to the corruptings of good manners and disturbinge the common peace and sosieties " — " We shall present the matter unto the supream authority of England, humbly craveing their advice and order, how to carry ourselves in any further respect towards these people soe that therewithall theire may be noe damadge or infringement of that chiefe principle in our charter concerninge freedom of consciences, and we alsoe are soe much the more encouraged to make our addresses unto the Lord Protector, for that we understand there are or have beene many of the foresayed people suffered to live in England ; yea even in the heart of the nation." ^ It was thus settled from the start that the Quakers were to be absolutely safe in Rhode Island, if nothing could be urged against them except peculiarity of religious opinions, and the time was not far distant when they were to become the actual rulers of the Colony, as we shall see. But, as the Letter from the "Court of Trial" of Rhode Island says, the Quakers were not satisfied to stay where there was no opposition.^ This was, however, not because they liked opposition and enjoyed a fight, but because they believed that they had come over to America under a commission from the Most High to sow their seed of truth in the soil of Massachusetts. They rejoiced in the spread of truth on the safe island in the Narragansett, and they were glad to see the "seed" spring up there, but they were especially thankful for a safe base of operations for the more strenuous campaign for which they had come over ; and it was just because this "campaign" was proving effective that that Letter from the Commissioners of the United Colonies was written. A Letter of John Copeland's, written a week after the Woodhouse came into Newport, says : ' Records of the Colony of Rhode Island, i. 378-380. ^ " We finde that in those places where these people aforesaid, in this Colony are most of all suffered to declare themselves freely, and are only opposed by arguments in discourse, there they least of all desire to come."— 0/. cit. p. 377. cH. m THE FOUNDERS 57 " Christopher Holder and I are going to Martha's Vineyard in obedience to the will of our God, whose will is our joy. Humphrey Norton is at present in Rhode Island, Mary Clark is waiting to go toward Boston ; William Brend is towards Providence. The Lord God of Hosts is with us, the shout of a King is amongst us ; the people fear our God ! " '^ Mary Clark had come over under a " special moving " to bear her testimony in Boston. She was, as Bishop tells us, "the mother of children, having a husband in England whom she left, being moved to come unto you." ^ She delivered her message, but it was answered by twenty stripes of a three-corded whip, " laid on with fury," then with twelve weeks of prison silence, and then she was sent out of the jurisdiction in winter season, probably back to Rhode Island,' A little later she went to her death by shipwreck. Holder and Copeland were to have more visible fruit for their labour. They went, as planned, to Martha's Vineyard where they met only stern rebuff from the white settlers, though the Indians were kind to them, took them in, saying, "you are strangers and the Lord has taught us to love strangers," * and finally carried them in their canoes to the mainland of Massachusetts. The travellers started now directly on foot through the woods for Sandwich, which, like Newport, was receptive soil for their truth, partly owing, perhaps, to the quiet work of Nicholas Upsall who had spent the preceding winter there in exile.^ ^ Quoted from Bowden's History of Friends in America, vol. i. p. 67. William Robinson was apparently labouring in Rhode Island though he is not mentioned. ' New England Judged, p. 50. See also Besse's Sufferings, vol. ii. p. 181. ' Mary Clark was the first Quaker woman in America to suffer whipping for her religious views. She had many followers, however. * Norton's Ensign, p. 22. ■■ A magistrate of Plymouth Colony calles Nicholas Upsall "the instigator of all this [Quaker] mischief." — History of Barnstable County, p. 169. I am convinced that there were a number of centres in the Plymouth Colony where there were "seekers" and where there was no loyal support for the existing system. There is in existence a Letter from the Governor and Magistrates of Massachusetts which supports this view. It is dated and Sept. 1656, and was written to theCommissioners of the United Colonies, telling of the arrival of Quakers who are " fitt Instruments to propogate the Kingdome of Sathan," and urging the "beloved Brethren and Naighbors of the collonie of Plymouth" to make preparation for guarding against "such pests." The Letter says that there is a great lack in Plymouth Colony of " a due acknowledgement of and encouragement to the Minnesters of the Gosspell. " There has been apparently ' ' a crying downe 58 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i " Their arrival," Bowden says, " was hailed with feelings of satisfaction by many who were sincere seekers after heavenly riches, but who had long been burdened with a lifeless ministry and dead forms of religion." ^ Sandwich^ was a town of Plymouth Colony and if it had its " sincere seelcers," it also had its proportion of persons who stood for the status quo. Humphrey Norton has given us a lively account of the commotion : " Great was the stir and noise of the tumultuous town, yea, all in an uproar, hearing that we, who were called by such a name as Quakers, were come into those parts. A great fire was kindled and the hearts of many did burn within them, so that in the heat thereof some said one thing and some said another; but the most part knew not what was the matter." ^ The two Quaker missionaries, after two trips to the town of Plymouth, one of them a forced trip, and after being " conveyed six miles " toward Rhode Island by a constable who hoped in vain that they would not come back — were finally arrested " as extravagant persons and vagabonds," and conveyed fifty miles in the direction of Rhode Island, with a threat of being whipped, if they ever returned, which thing they were pretty certain to do! They had made only a short visit In the town of Sandwich, but the results of it were great. A number of the leading townspeople were convinced by this first visit and were henceforth ready to risk goods and lives for their new views of truth, a risk they were very soon called to face. One of the magistrates of the town writing the year following — December 1658 — says that the Quakers " have many meetings and many adherents, almost the whole town of Sandwich is adhering towards them."^ The records show that seventy -five persons were presented in court during that year for attending " meeting," and this in spite of the fact that there was a fine of forty shillings placed upon every person who of minnestiy and minnesters " and the Letter declares that the way to meet this "new engine of Sathan" is to "reinstate a pious orthodox minnestry"— Plymouth Records, vol. ii. p. 156. ' Op. cit. i. 71. 2 Ensign, p. 22. ' Letter of Justice James Cudworth, printed in Besse, ii. p. 191, and in Nem England Judged, p. 168. CH. m THE FOUNDERS 59 allowed a Quaker meeting in his house and a fine of ten shillings for every " hearer " who attended, " yea and if nothing be spoken at the meeting, as it sometimes falls out!"i The extent of the " convincement " comes to light in a passage from Cotton Mather's Life of Rev. Samuel Newman : " How many straits he underwent in that dark day when he was almost the only minister whose invincible patience held out under the scandalous 1 See Cudworth's Letter. The first law against the Quakers in the Plymouth Colony was passed in 1657 and is an interesting "relic." It is as follows: "Whereas there hath severall psons come into this GoVment comonly called Quakers whose doctrines and practises manifestly tends to the subversion of the fouDdamentals of Christian Religion, Church Order and Civil! peace of this Gov'ment as appears by the Testimonies given in sundry depositions and otherwise. It is therefore enacted by the Court and the Authority thereof that noe Quaker or pson comonly soe called bee entertained by any pson or psons within this Govrraent under the penaltie of five pounds for every such default or bee whipt ; It is also enacted by this Court and the Authority therof that if any Rantor or Quaker or pson comonly soe called shall come into any towne within this Govrment, and by any pson or psons bee knowne or suspected to bee such the pson so knowing or suspecting him shall forthwith acquaint the Constable or his deputie of them on paine of Presentment and soe liable to cencure in Court whoe [i.e. the magistrate] forthwith on such notice of them or any other Intelligence hee shall have of them shall dilligently endeavor to apprehend him or them and bring them before some one of the majestrates whoe shall cause him or them to bee comitted to Goale, there to be kept close prisoners with such victualls onely as the Court aloweth untill he or they shall defray the charge both of theire Imprisonment and theire Transportation away ; Together with an engagement to returne into this Gov'ment noe more or else to be continewed in close durance till further orders from the Court. And forasmuch as the meetings of such psons whether strangers or others proveth disturbing to the peace of this Gov^'ment. It is therefore enacted by the Court and the Authority thereof that henceforth noe such meetings bee assembled or kept by any pson in any place within this Govi^ment under the penaltie of forty shillings a time for every speaker and ten shillings a time for every hearer that are heads of families and forty shillings a time for the owner of the place that pmits them soe to meet together ; and if they meet together att theire silent meetings soe called then every pson soe meeting together shall pay ten shillings a time and the owner of the place forty shillings a time." — Plymouth Records, vol. xi. pp. loo-ioi. In 1658, it was decreed : " Noe Quaker or Rantor or any such corrupt pson shall be admitted to be a freeman." "All such as refuse to take the oath of fidelitie as quakers shall have noe voat or shall be imployed in any place of trust" (iHd. p. 100). In 1659 it was declared " that many persons in Plymouth Colony are being corrupted by reading Quaker books, writings and EpisUes which are widely distributed, " it was therefore decreed that all such books shall be seized [ibid. p. 121). In 1660, it is noted that the Quakers "have bine furnished with horses and thereby they have made speedy passage from place to place poisoning the Inhabitants with their cursed tennetts," it is therefore decreed that " if any one shall furnish them with a horse or horse kind, the same shall be seized on for the use of the government " [Hid. p. 126). In June 1661 it was decreed that " Quakers and such like vagabonds" shall "bee whipt with rodds soe it exceed not fifteen stripes " and made to depart the government " {ibid. pp. 129-130). 6o QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i neglect and contempt of the ministry which for a while the whole country of Plymouth was bewitched into ! " It appears from Justice Cudworth's Letter that the Court had just imposed fines amounting to otie hundred and fifty pounds on the new Quaker disciples, and yet they steadily increased in number. A poor man, himself lame, father of seven or eight children, had his two cows taken from him for attending meeting. " What are you going to do now ? " the marshall asked, as he drove away the cows. " God who has given me these will still provide for us," was the poor man's answer, and he stood by his faith. One of the most dramatic incidents of the period was the convincement of Isaac Robinson and his influence in the formation of a Quaker centre in Falmouth. He was a son of the famous " Separatist " pastor, John Robinson. In 1659 the General Court of Plymouth sent Isaac Robinson and three others to attend Quaker meetings in order to endeavour to " reduce them from the error of their ways." ^ Instead of convincing the Quakers of error, he himself became convinced of their truth, embraced their doctrines and was dismissed from civil employment in the Colony. He was faithful to his father's advice to "expect the breaking out of more light ! " Finding life now uncomfortable in his old home he, with thirteen others, sailed around the cape to the Succoneset shore, where he built the first house in Falmouth and became a leader of the Quaker group in this town. The beginning was thus made. Almost simultaneously two Quaker meetings sprang into being, one in Newport and the other in Sandwich, and when Christopher Holder and John Copeland returned to Newport they had the satisfaction of feeling that there were at least two live centres in the new land. Holder and Copeland had hardly left the Plymouth Colony when another Woodhouse passenger, Humphrey Norton, appeared there and carried ' Records of Plymouth Colony, xi. p. 124. It is an interesting fact that one of John Winthrop's sons, Samuel, joined Friends. cH. Ill THE FOUNDERS 6i forward the work the other two had begun. He, too, was soon in the hands of the authorities, and was charged with holding the doctrine of a Light within sufficient for salvation. His answer was that the Scriptures say that " the Grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared unto all men," and they also say that this " Grace is sufficient." " This little grain," the Ensign says, " stopped the lion's mouth." Norton was thereupon conveyed fifty miles toward Rhode Island, and as he went out of the Colony, William Brend came in, to continue the work. The latter, together with John Copeland and Sarah Gibbons, who joined him, soon formed a very live Quaker circle in the town of Scituate. They won to their cause a noble-minded magistrate named Timothy Hatherly, but notwithstanding his friendship they were given a cruel scourging before they got away from the Colony.^ After an unusually terrible experience in New Haven, where he was flogged and branded with an H, Humphrey Norton went once more into Plymouth Colony.^ Before going forth on this second expedition to the country of the Pilgrims, Norton passed through a profound inward experience of God's " call " to Plymouth, attended with an overwhelming sense that sufferings were awaiting him there. John Rous, who had recently arrived from Barbadoes,^ was his companion on this perilous journey. They reached Plymouth the first of June 1658, and were immediately arrested and imprisoned. The examination of their doctrines failed to show them to be "heretics," though Governor Prince called them " Papists and Jesuits and inordinate fellows," but they were finally brought ^ It is a persistent tradition that the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony did not persecute other Christians who differed from them in faith. If they had not been powerfully urged to take extreme measures to guard their heritage perhaps they would have given the freedom which they came to seek. But any one who believes that they did not persecute would soon have that idea expelled by reading either Norton's Ensign or Bishop's New England Judged. One is sorry to discover that John Alden was one of the magistrates who took part in the harrying of the Quakers in Plymouth Colony. ' He tells us that, during this New Haven ordeal when the spectators thought he was being killed, he so felt the Presence of the Lord that ' ' be was as if covered with balm." — Ensign, p. 51. ' John Rous, William Leddra, and Thomas Harris came together to New England from Barbadoes near the end of 1657. 62 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i under sentence for refusing to take an oath — a very common trap for catching a Quaker when no criminal charge could be established. For this fault they were scourged, though the people thronged about them to shake their hands and as usual they advanced their cause by their sufferings for it. " This persecution," writes John Rous, " did prove much for the advantage of truth ; for Friends did with much boldness own us openly in it, and it did work deeply with many." It must have done so, for the whole southern part of Massachusetts was, as we shall see, honeycombed with Quakerism by the year 1660. CHAPTER IV THE MARTYRS Nearly simultaneously with the invasion of Plymouth Colony and of Newport by the Quaker missionaries, William Brend, the veteran missionary of the Woodhouse party, had been proclaiming his Truth in the city of Providence and the surrounding regions. Roger Williams, though heroically devoted to liberty of thought and speech, was by mental constitution and temperament impervious to the message of the Friends. He was by natural bent of mind unmystical, and he had no sympathy with the idea of inward personal revelations. He was as ready as any of the great theologians of Massachusetts to give his reasons for the hope that was in him, and he stood possessed of a very definite set of doctrines and practices, which were to his mind essential to a right conception of Christianity, but, like Gamaliel and unlike most of his contemporaries, he was willing to allow others to try their faith undisturbed. There were others in the Providence community, however, who were already predisposed to the Quaker Truth. The most important person in the prepared circle at Providence was Catherine Scott, a sister of Anne Hutchinson. She was the wife of Richard Scott, a man of considerable standing and influence in the colony at the head of Narragansett Bay. The Quaker missionaries always seem guided by an unerring instinct to prepared families like this one of Richard Scott's, and here in this home the first conquests to the new faith in Providence were made. We shall hear later of the heroic mettle of the women of this household. 63 64 QUAKERS. IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i The next locality to be selected for missionary effort was the town of Salem. Like Newport and Sandwich this historic town already had a little company of spiritually-minded people who were dissatisfied with a " covenant of Works," and who longed for the day-dawn and for the arising of the Day Star in their hearts. There is a remarkable passage in a letter written in 1657 from Barbadoes by Henry Fell to Margaret Fell of Swarthmore Hall, in which he mentions Plymouth Colony and Salem as two places where a spiritual " seed " can easily be cultivated. "In Plimouth patent," he says, "there is a people not soe ridged as the others at Boston and there are great desires among them after the Truth. Some there are, as I hear, convinced who meet in silence at a place called Salem. Oh truly great is the desire of my soule towards them and the love that flows out after them dayly, for I see in the Eternal Light the Lord hath a great worke to do in that nation." ^ There is an interesting passage bearing on this Salem group, in Cotton Mather's Magnalia : " I can tell the world that the first Quakers that ever were in the world were certain fanaticks here in our town of Salem, who held forth almost all the fancies and whimsies which a few years after [Mather thinks Quakerism began in England in 1652] were broached by them that were so called in England, wit A whom yet none of ours had the least communication.'" ^ There had been influences at work in Salem for a score of years which tended to form such a group as ■ that here revealed. Roger Williams, though only a lay- preacher, had been chosen minister of the Salem Church in 163 1, and, after a period of similar service in Plymouth Colony, had been invited back to Salem as minister in 1634. Though not a mystic and not encouraging faith in inward guidance, yet he was a powerful advocate of " independency " in religion — the absolute separation of religion from State control — and he insisted that every act of religion should be a personal matter, belonging ' Letter in Swarthmore Collection, i. 66. 2 Magnalia (Hartford ed. of 1853), ii. 523. cH. IV THE MARTYRS 65 within the private domain of the worshipper himself. He was utterly opposed to tithes or to any forced support of religion. That he had many supporters in Salem is beyond question, and there can be no doubt that his powerful personality and his vigorous exposition carried many members of the Church out of the ruts of orthodoxy. There were, too, many immigrants in Lynn and Salem who were of the " Seeker " type, others who held the position of the Anabaptists, persons who had come thither expecting to find freedom for their " seeking " and for their independent views. One of the most prominent persons of this type was Lady Deborah Moody, who was forced to migrate to Long Island, where we shall again meet her.-' Many of her sympathisers went with her, but many also remained behind and quietly cultivated their freer and more liberal form of religion. In such ways and under such influences there had developed in this stronghold of orthodoxy a fellowship of persons who were in positive dissent from the established form of faith and practice, and who were ready to follow the lead of the Quaker messengers. It is a mystery how the news of this " spiritual circle " in Salem got to Barbadoes in 1657, for no Friends had yet been there, but it is probable that Mary Fisher and Ann Austin heard of it while they were in Boston and carried the report back with them. In any case, it was true ; and as soon as Christopher Holder and John Copeland had accomplished their first piece of work in Plymouth Colony — "where there were desires after the truth" — they started out from Rhode Island (which Henry Fell, in the above-mentioned letter, says the Puritans called "the island of error") for the more hazardous enterprise in Salem, where the little group of " convinced wor- shipers" were waiting for encouragement. They seem to have sought out in secret the persons who were favour- ably inclined to their message before they made their risky appeal to the Salem public. Humphrey Norton says that they told their little group of listeners " the things ' Book II. chap. i. 66 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i which they had seen and heard and their hands had handled of the word of life " — which means that they did what all true religious leaders do, they endeavoured to transmit an experience rather than to discourse on abstract doctrines, and he tells us further that " the Word was soon ingrafted in their hearers," so that in a short time they, too, became " possessors of the same experience and fellow-sufferers with their teachers ! " ^ But they were not content to do their work in a corner. They hoped, somewhat vainly as the sequel showed, that they could carry conviction in a public address. Christopher Holder, " moved of the Lord," as Bishop tells us, rose on Sunday morning, in Salem Meeting (21st Sep- tember 1657) "after the priest had done," to speak a few words in the line of the latter's " message." Speaking in public after the minister had finished was a common practice and a recognised privilege in Puritan times, but it was a bold proceeding for a Quaker to under- take in the home town of Endicott ! He had hardly started when he was seized by the hair and "his mouth violently stopped with a glove and handkerchief thrust thereinto with much fury by one of the church members, a commissioner." ^ The two visitors were taken to Boston on Monday and there received thirty stripes apiece with a three-cord knotted whip, which cut their flesh so cruelly that a woman spectator (for such things were done in public) fell in a faint. They were then put in a bare cell, with no bedding, and kept three days and nights without food or drink, and in addition were imprisoned nine weeks, in New England winter weather, with no fire. And by a special order of the Governor and Deputy-Governor, though there was no existing law to give warrant for it, the prisoners were severely whipped twice each week, the first punish- ment consisting of fifteen lashes and each successive one being increased by three lashes.' As this order was issued 1 Norton's Ensign, p. 60. 2 New England Judged, p. 50. " The law of 14th October 1656 provided that Quakers coming into the jurisdiction of Massachusetts should be committed to the house of correction and at their entrance should be severely whipped. cH. IV THE MARTYRS 67 when two weeks of the imprisonment had passed, the total number of lashes endured by these long-suffering men at this time would be three hundred and fifty-seven ! When the glove and handkerchief were being thrust into Holder's mouth, Samuel Shattuck, apparently one of the " dissenting circle," pulled away the hand of the commissioner to keep Holder from being choked. He was at once arrested as a " friend of Quakers," taken to Boston, and put under bond not to go to any meetings of the Quakers and to answer at the next Court. It was soon found that the Quaker visitors had been entertained in the home of Lawrence and Cassandra Southwick, who were evidently the leaders of this little " circle " in Salem. They, too, were taken to Boston. The husband was turned over to the authorities of his Church to be dealt with, but Cassandra was imprisoned seven weeks and then fined forty shillings for having in her possession a " paper on Truth and the Scriptures " which her guests had written. This " paper " was almost certainly " a Declaration of Faith and Exhortation to obedience," issued by Christopher Holder and John Copeland, and signed also by Richard Doudney, who had meantime found his way into Massachusetts and had been arrested because " his speech betrayed him " and made his hearer judge him a Quaker disciple. He was thus joined again with his fellow-travellers Holder and Copeland, and was a signer of the " Declaration on Truth and the Scriptures." This is the earliest formal Declaration of Faith issued by any of the Quaker messengers either in the Old or the New World. It is a strikingly orthodox document, and approaches as nearly as possible to the theological views then in vogue in the Churches. "We do believe," it declares, "in the only true and living God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ . . . who at sundry times and in divers manners, spake in time past to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days hath spoken unto us by His Son . . . the which Son is that Jesus Christ that was born of the Virgin ; who suffered for our offenses, is risen again for our justification, and is ascended into the highest heavens and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father : Even in Him do 68 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i we believe, who is the only begotten Son of the Father, full of grace and truth. And in Him do we trust alone for salvation ; by whose blood we are washed from sin. [We believe in] the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of Truth that proceedeth from the Father and the Son, by which we are sealed and adopted sons and heirs of the Kingdom of heaven, by which Spirit the Scriptures of Truth were given forth. . . . The Scriptures we own to be a true declaration of the Father, Son and Spirit, in which is declared what was from the beginning, what was present and was to come." The writers of this document were evidently en- deavouring to disarm their theological opponents by showing that they were " sound " on the fundamental tenets of universal Christian belief, and they shrewdly put these points of agreement in the foreground of their Declaration, and only at the end of the paper touched upon their own peculiar doctrine of "the Light which showeth you the secrets of your hearts and the deeds that are not good." " While you have the Light," they say in conclusion, " believe in the Light that you may be children of the Light, for, as you love it and obey it, it will lead you to repentance, bring you to know Him in Whom is remission of sins. . . . This is the desire of our souls /br all that have the least breathing after God, that they may come to know Him in deed and truth and find His power in them and with them." ^ If this Declaration was prepared, as appears, to be a conciliatory document and to quiet the opposition, it was a complete failure. Another paper, written "against the persecuting spirit, with a warning against those who indulge in it" — a paper no longer extant — was issued about the same time by the three Friends, and was peculiarly resented by the ministers of the Colony. In fact it was the discovery of that paper which brought the extra lashes, before mentioned, on the prisoners in the Boston jail. But even the possession of the conciliatory document proved a criminal offence in the case of Cassandra Southwick, for, as we have seen, she was kept ' This Declaration was first brought to light by Goold Brown the grammarian, and is printed in full in Bowden i. 91-92. cH. IV THE MARTYRS 69 seven weeks a prisoner and was fined forty shillings " for having and owning to the truth of the Paper the strangers had written." The Southwicks, " a grave and aged couple," together with some of their friends, revolting from this spirit of persecution, now withdrew entirely from the Church services in Salem, and met on " First-days " in each others' houses for " quiet waiting on the Lord." ^ The Southwicks were apprehended, catechised on "the sufficiency of the Light within," which they admitted, and were put in the House of Correction. They were thereafter constantly harried and fined to the verge of poverty, and finally banished from the Colony. After their banishment two of their children, Daniel and Provided, having no estates to cover their fines, were ordered to be sold into slavery, though no shipmaster could be found to execute the order.^ The Christian spirit of these Salem Quakers comes out beautifully in a Letter which they wrote from their prison in Boston : " For our part, we have true peace and rest in the Lord in all our sufferings, and are made willing in the Power and Strength of God, freely to offer up our lives, in this cause of God for which we suffer, yea, and we do find, through Grace, the enlargement of God in our imprisoned estate, to Whom alone we commit ourselves and families, for the disposing of us according to His infinite wisdom and pleasure, in whose Love is our Rest and Life." ^ It is evident that the converts to Quakerism in the New ^ Besides the Southwicks and Samuel Shattuclc, Joshua Buffum and wife and son Joseph, John Small, John Burton, Edward Harnet, Nicholas Phelps (whose home was in Ipswich), Edward Wharton, Samuel Gaskin, John Daniels, Joseph Pope and wife, Anthony Needham and wife, George Gardner, Thomas Bracket, Henry Trask and wife belonged to this Salem circle (see Annals of Salem ii. 399 and New England Judged, pp. 56-64). Besse also speaks of twelve persons, unnamed, who were fined for not attending Church and presumably joining with Friends. — Besse ii. 188. ' The details of the attempted sale of the two Southwick children are given in Besse ii. 197 and in New England Judged, pp. 107-112. Whittier has told the incident in his ' ' Cassandra Southwick. " The order to sell Daniel and Provided Southwick " to any of the English nation at Virginia or Barbadoes" is in the Records of Massachusetts Colony, vol. iv. part i. p. 366. ' There is ground for a suspicion that Cassandra Southwick and some others of the Salem group were inclined to adopt extreme ascetic views regarding the marriage relation. She seems to have held the opinion that to have children after the flesh was to fall from the higher life in the Spirit. See Joseph 70 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i World immediately rose to the heroic spirit and the complete confidence in God and their Cause which characterized the Quaker "apostles" who came among them. After the arrest of Holder, Copeland, Shattuck, and the South- wicks in September 1657, a new law against Quakers was passed, 14th October 1657, defining the punishment which was to be meted out to the persons who are called "the cursed sect of Quakers."^ It inflicted a fine of one hundred pounds on any one who should bring a Quaker into the Colony ; forty shillings for every hour that any one should entertain or conceal a Quaker, and it provided that any Quaker returning after having once suffered should, if a man, have an ear cropped ; for a second offence the other ear, and for a third have his tongue bored with a hot iron ; if the offender was a woman she was to be severely whipped and on the third offence to have her tongue bored. By May of 1658, the eleven who came over in the Woodhouse, and in addition John Rous, William Leddra, and Thomas Harris of Barbadoes, and Mary Dyer of Rhode Island, were all at work in New England.^ Thomas Harris made his way to Boston, where he was arrested, flogged, and imprisoned. William Brend and William Leddra pushed on to Salem, where they held a meeting in the woods, but were surprised and carried off". William Brend, though the oldest of the band of missionaries, was called to pass through the most cruel sufferings that were meted out in Boston to any prisoner. The tale is too awful to tell in detail, but the inhumanity can be judged from the fact that one incident in his round of torture consisted of one hundred and seventeen blows on his bare back with a tarred rope. He was found dying — "his body having turned cold " and " his flesh having rotted " Nicholson's Letters to Margaret Fell. — Swarthmore Collection, iv. 107-108. Major Hawthorne of Salem reported that he had heard ' ' Consander Southleck " say that she was greater than Moses, for Moses had seen God but twice, and then only His back parts, but that she had seen Him three times face to face !— Massachusetts Archives, vol. x. p. 264. ^ Records of Massachusetts Colony, vol. iv. part i. p. 398. ^ In August six of the missionaries left New England for Barbadoes. They were William Leddra, Thomas Harris, William Brend, Robert Hodgson, Sarah Gibbons, and Dorothy Waugh. cH. IV THE MARTYRS 7 1 — and a physician was hurried in to treat his mangled body and implored to save his life, for the magistrates were now thoroughly frightened by the impression which their brutality was making on the citizens of Boston. John Norton, however, was still stout in his remorseless attitude, saying of William Brend : " He endeavoured to beat the gospel ordinances black and blue, and it was but just to beat him black and blue."^ When John Rous and Humphrey Norton heard what their aged friend was passing through they felt impelled to go to Boston. Upon their arrival they went to hear John Norton's sermon. One could hardly expect them to appreciate it. Here is John Rous' account of the visit to the Church : " Humphrey Norton and I were moved to go into the great meeting-house at Boston upon one of their lecture days, where we found John Norton their teacher set up, who, like a babbling Pharisee, ran over a vain repetition near an hour long. When his glass was out he began his sermon, wherein, among many lifeless expressions, he spake much of the danger of those called Quakers, a flood of gall and vinegar instead of the cup of cold and refreshing water ! How often hungry souls have been deceived by him I leave to that of God in their consciences to judge." 2 Humphrey Norton adds to the reader : " Thou mayest see the husks on which the New England priests feed their flocks ! " They were almost immediately arrested, imprisoned, and flogged. Rous has left an account of one week's tale of suffering : "On the Second-day (Monday) they whipped six Friends [Salem colonists who had attended the meeting] ; on the Third-day ' The Ensign, p. 78. * Ensign p. 55. The Magistrates had enjoined Rev. Mr. John Norton to prepare a document ' ' to manifest the evill of theire [the Quaker] tenets and the dainger of theire practices," and to answer their writings by which "divers of wealc capacities are deceived. " — Records of Massachusetts Colony, vol. iv. part i. p. 348. Norton's "Declaration" was published in 1659 under the title "The Heart of New England Rent at the Blasphemies of the present Generation." He tries to prove that the Quakers are offspring of the Miinster fanatics, and he says : " The Wolf which ventures over the wide sea, out of a ravening desire to prey upon the sheep ; when landed, discovered, and taken hath no cause to complain, though for the security of the flock he be penned up, with that door opening into the fold fast shut, but having another door purposely left open, whereby he may depart at his pleasure, either returning from whence he came, or otherwise quitting the place." 72 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i of the week the gaoler laid William Brend .... neck and heels, as they call it, in irons, as he confessed, for sixteen hours ; and on the Fourth-day the gaoler gave W. B. 117 strokes with a pitched rope : on the Fifth-day they imprisoned us, and on the Seventh-day we suffered. The beating of W. B. did much work in the town, and for a time much liberty was granted, for several people came to us in the prison, but the enemy, seeing the forward- ness and love in the people towards us, plotted, and a warrant was given forth that if we would not work we should be whipped once in every three days, and the first time have fifteen stripes and the second time eighteen, and the third time twenty-one. So on the Second-day was a se'ennight after our first whipping, four of us received fifteen stripes apiece, the which did so work with the people that on the Fourth-day after we were released, so we returned to Rhode Island." In his letter already quoted, which he dates "from the Lion's den called Boston prison," 3rd September 1658, John Rous gives a graphic review of the work which had so far been accomplished in the face of a most vigorous and relentless persecution : — " Truth is spread here above two hundred miles, and many in the land are in fine conditions, and very sensible of the power of God, and walk honestly in their measures. And some of the inhabitants of the land, who are Friends, have been forth in the service, and they do more grieve the enemy than we, for they have hope to be rid of us, but they have no hope to be rid of them. We keep the burden of the service off from them at present, for no sooner is there need in a place, but straightway some or other of us step to it, but, when it is the will of the Father to clear us of this land, then will the burden fall on them. The Seed in Boston and Plymouth Patents is ripe, and the weight very much lies on this town, the which being brought into sub- jection to the Truth, the others will not stand out long. The Seed in Connecticut and Newhaven Patents is not as yet ripe, but there is a hopeful appearance, the gathering of which in its time will much redound to the glory of God. We have two strong places in this land, the one at Newport in Rhode Island, and the other at Sandwich, which the enemy will never get dominion over, and at Salem there are several pretty Friends in their measures. . . . There are Friends, few or more, almost from one end of the land to the other that is inhabited by the English."! ^ Letter of John Rous to Margaret Fell, 3rd September 1658. — Swarthraore Collection. cH. IV THE MARTYRS 73 Sarah Gibbons and Dorothy Waugh had, in the early spring of this same year, accomplished an almost im- possible journey. They travelled on foot from Newport "in great storms and tempests of frost and snow" — what we should call March blizzards — all the way to Salem. " They lodged in the wilderness day and night — through which they cheerfully passed to accomplish the will and work of God to their appointed place, where their message was gladly received." ^ They had two weeks of undisturbed labour among those who " gladly received their message," and then they " felt moved " to try Boston, where they received the usual barbaric whipping which " tore their flesh," and they then were allowed to go away again to Rhode Island, which to the Friends of that period was the "habitation of the hunted-Christ, where we ever found a place of rest when weary we have been." ^ A still more astonishing journey was made in the summer of 1658 by Josiah Coale and Thomas Thurston, the latter of whom had been in the party of eight that landed in Boston in 1656. They came over from England to Virginia, where they published their message, and then travelled all the way on foot from Virginia to New England "through uncouth passages, vast wildernesses, uninhabited countries, deemed impassable for any but the Indians." " For outward sustenance," writes Josiah Coale " we knew not how to supply ourselves, but without questioning or doubting, we gave up freely to the Lord, knowing assuredly that His presence was with us ; and according to our faith so it was, for His presence and love we found with us daily." ^ They touched the hearts of the wild Susquehanna Indians, who not only gave them "courteous entertainment" but also accompanied them to the Dutch Settlement in New Amsterdam and nursed Thomas Thurston through a dangerous illness. * Through such hardships they came, because they too felt " the fire and the hammer " in their souls. Josiah Coale was one of ^ The Ensign, p. 15. ^ The Ensign, p. 69. ^ Josiah Coale's Letter to George Bishop. — Bowden, i. 123. * New England fudged, p. 29 ; and Basse ii. 196. 74 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i the finest spirits among the entire band of " publishers of Truth" in the colonies. He was born about 1633, "of a highly respectable family," near Bristol, and, like so many of his generation, he passed through a deep travail of soul before he found peace. He had revolted in his youth from formal religion, and he nowhere could find anything which answered to his heart's need. " How to come into the way of life," he says, " I was still a stranger." At length, under the ministry of John Audland and John Camm in Bristol in 1654, he found " the way of life," and gave him- self up into God's service, to follow whithersoever he might lead. " He baulked no danger," wrote William' Penn of him, " and he counted nothing too dear for the service of his Lord." He possessed a rare and unusual gift in ministry, and at his best he powerfully carried conviction. When the occasion called for it his speech was " like an ax, a hammer, or a sharp piercing sword," and then again it became " soft and pleasant, like streams of immortal life running through him." In prayer he was favoured with surpassing grace and power, and often seemed transported as he pleaded for the Light to break upon souls who were in the dark. ^ During his brief period of labour in New England he devoted himself especially to the Indians in Martha's Vineyard and in Plymouth Colony. He had lived much among the Indians on his long journey, and he had in a peculiar way the key to the Indians' hearts. They loved him, trusted him, and " had true breathings to know his God." As soon as he turned from the Indies " to sound the day of the Lord " among the colonists he met a different reception. He was dragged from a Friend's house in Sandwich and was committed to prison, where he appears to have remained until his departure from the Colony. Christopher Holder, John Copeland, and John Rous were the first to suffer under the law of October 1657. After his release from the terrible imprisonment recorded above, Christopher Holder took passage for the West 1 See William Penn's "Testimony Concerning Josiah Coale," Introduction to Coale's Works (1671). CH. IV THE MARTYRS 75 Indies ; where he probably spent the winter/ but he continually felt " the fire and the hammer " within him, and was eager to be back where his friends were risking their lives and where he knew he was needed. In February 1658, he sailed from Barbadoes by way of Bermuda for Rhode Island, and after a period of labour in this safe field he put out again with his old-time com- panion, John Copeland, to face the dangers of the stern Massachusetts law. They were arrested in August 1658 in the town of Dedham and brought before Governor Endicott in Boston, who said, " You can be sure that your ears will be cut off." John Rous, who meantime had been labouring in Rhode Island, and had returned to the field of danger, was seized about the same time and was brought to trial with the other two. " There was a great lamenting for me by many when I came again," he says, " but they were not minded by me. I was much tempted to say I came to the town to take shipping to go to Barbadoes, but I could not deny Him who moved me to come hither, nor His service, to avoid sufferings." After a frivolous examination in theology, they were sentenced to lose an ear apiece. Among those who came to be spectators of the execution of this barbaric sentence was Catherine Scott of Providence — " a grave and sober ancient woman of good breeding, education and circumstances, of unblame- able conversation." ^ She was, as we have seen, a sister of Aifne Hutchinson,^ and had been the first to become a Friend in Providence, and she had come to Boston to show her sympathy with the sufferers. She was the mother of many children, all of whom became Friends, for as John Rous beautifully expressed it, " the power of God took place in all her children." Her daughter Mary was later to become the wife of Christopher Holder. Because Catherine Scott made too free critical comments on the execution of the ear-cropping, she was given ten stripes and was told, in words heavy with sinister meaning, ■■ A letter from Peter Evans mentions service by Holder in St. Christopher and Nevis during the winter of 1658. — Swarthmore Collection, iii. no. '^ New England fudged, p. 94. ^ See Winthrop i. 352. 76 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i that " if she came hither again there was likely to be a law to hang her." Her brave answer was : " If God calls us, woe to us if we come not. I have no question that He whom we love will make us not count our lives dear unto ourselves for His name's sake." " We shall be as ready to take away your lives as you will be to lay them down," was the ominous reply of Endicott.-' At the General Court of Massachusetts, held the 19th of October 1658, the final step was taken to end, if possible, the " inroads " of " this pernicious sect." Whip- pings, fines, ear-croppings, and imprisonment had proved utterly futile. Still the Quakers came just as though they were wanted. When John Rous and Humphrey Norton heard of William Brend's terrible sufferings, they started at once for Boston, as we have seen, because they could not eat or sleep for their desire " to bear their part with the prisoners of hope, for a testimony of Jesus." ^ What could be done with such men ? Neal was right when he said : " Such was the enthusiastic fire of the Quakers that nothing could quench it." ^ The only thing left to be tried was the penalty of last resort — death. The clergy of the Colony, especially John Norton, must be held primarily responsible for this extreme law of 1658.* It was passed with much difficulty, and was carried in the House of Deputies by a majority of only one, and was from the first unpopular in general with the lay citizens.^ The law, largely composed of railing and abuse against the Quakers, contained this clause : " And the said person, being convicted to be of the sect of the Quakers, shall be sentenced to banishment, upon pain of death!' ^ It was now to be settled whether anything could " quench their enthusiastic fire." ^ New England Judged, p. 95. 2 Ensign, p. 79. ^ Neal, History cf New England, i. 306. ^ See New England Judged, p. 86. ' A few citizens were in favour of stern measures. See Petition in Massa- chusetts Archives, x. 246. ' Thiis law is to be found in full in Records of Massachusetts Colony, vol. iv. part i. p. 345. The first official recommendation of the death penalty was made at the meeting of the Federal Commissioners of the United Colonies, held in Boston in the autumn of 1658, with Endicott presiding. A resolution was passed denouncing the Quakers as blasphemers, and recommending the several colonies, which they represented, to pass laws making it a capital offence for banished Quakers to return. CH. IV THE MARTYRS T7 The native leaders of the Salem group were the first to receive sentence under the capital law. After two years of almost constant persecution, the chief members of the new society were banished from the jurisdiction of Massachusetts by Order of the General Court held the nth of May 1659.^ Lawrence and Cassandra Southwick found their way to Shelter Island, near the eastern end of Long Island, which was a safe refuge for persecuted Friends, for it was owned and governed by Nathaniel Sylvester, a Friend. Here they peacefully lived in their new-found faith for a brief period, and quietly finished their earthly course. Joshua Buffum, another of the group, moved to Rhode Island, while Samuel Shattuck, Nicholas Phelps, and Josiah Southwick made their way to England through Barbadoes. They appear to have landed in Bristol in February 1660, where they found themselves once more in a storm centre of persecution. William Dewsbury has given us a vivid picture of the scene. On the 7th of February a meeting was held at the house of Edward Pyott in Bristol while a great mob filled the streets around, storming to break up the meeting which, in spite of the noise and fury, was " precious in the life of the Lord who filled His tabernacle with His glory in which Friends parted with joy in the Lord." In the evening the mob attacked the house in which the banished Friends were staying, and where William Dewsbury was spending the evening with them. The news had just arrived of the martyrdom of William Robinson and Marmaduke Stephenson (soon to be recounted), and the little group of Friends were sitting bowed with grief while the mob raged outside. Dewsbury says : " We were bowed down before our God, and prayer was made unto Him, when they knocked at the door. It came upon my spirit it were the rude people, and the Life of God did mightily arise, and they had no power to come in till we were clear before our God. Then they came in setting the house about with muskets and lighted matches, so after a season of time they ' Records cf Massachusetts Colony, vol. iv. part i. p. 367. See also ibid. p. 349, 78 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i came into the room where I was, and Amor Stoddard with me ; I looked upon them when they came into the room [and] they cried as fast as they could well speak, ' we will be civil, we will be civil.' I spake these words, 'see that you be so.' They run forth of the room and came no more into it but run up and down in the house with their weapons in their hands, and the Lord God, who is the God of His seed . . . caused their hearts to fail and they pass[ed] away, and not any harm done to any ofus."i The next day the Friends visited George Bishop, whose home vi^as in Bristol, making their way through the mob who were " struck at their hearts by the majesty of God and stood gazing upon us." One can easily imagine the author of New England Judged seizing this opportunity to get at first hand the details of the sufferings of which he was to be the historian. For a brief time there was a solemn pause before the Massachusetts law was put to a supreme test, but there were heroic spirits quite ready for the worst the law could do. Every Friend in the ministry in America had undoubtedly read and had been moved by George Fox's remarkable Epistle written from Launceston Prison, an Epistle which shows in the writer the highest marks of spiritual leader- ship : " Let all nations hear the sound by word or writing. Spare no place, spare no tongue nor pen, but be obedient to the Lord God ; go through the work : be valiant for the truth upon earth ; and tread and trample upon all that is contrary. . . . The ministers of the Spirit must minister to the spirit that is in prison, which hath been in captivity in every one, that with the Spirit of Christ people may be led out of captivity up to God, the Father of spirits, [may] do service to him, and have unity with him, with the scriptures and one with another. ... Be patterns, be examples in all countries, places, islands, nations, wherever you come, that your carriage and life may preach among all sorts of people, and to them ; then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in every one." ^ The unconquerable spirit of the leader had infused itself 1 Letter of Dewsbury to Margaret Fell (Swarthmore Collection, iv. 134) ; and Letter of A. Parker to Margaret Fell (Swarthmore Collection, i. 169). The date of Dewsbury's letter is fixed by internal evidence. ^ Journal, i. 315. CH. IV THE MARTYRS 79 into the entire band of " publishers," and they were sure in the end to defeat the law makers. In September 1659 William Robinson, Marmaduke Stephenson, Mary Dyer, and a little girl of eleven years, named Patience Scott, daughter of Richard and Catherine Scott of Providence, were apprehended as Quakers. This child of eleven had come on foot from Providence, under a definite " moving of the Lord," as she believed, " to bear her testimony against the persecuting spirit." William Robinson was a Woodkouse voyager. Marmaduke Stephenson was a Yorkshire farmer who was on a religious mission in Barbadoes when he heard of " the law to put the servants of the living God to death," and he heard within himself " the word of the Lord, saying ' Go to Boston.' " ^ He was one of a party of eight Friends who at this crisis formed a second apostolic expedition to the American colonies.^ Mary Dyer was the wife of William Dyer of Newport, and a type of person whose fire was not likely to be quenched by the terror of statutes ! Nicholas Davis of Plymouth Colony had come to Boston on business about the same time and, being a Quaker, was caught in the same drag-net. The little girl from Providence proved mighty in her childish wisdom, and "confounded the lawyers and doctors," but she was declared to have "an unclean spirit " and was turned over to her family as too young to come under the law. The other four were banished "on pain of death the 12th of September 1659." Nicholas Davis returned home, and so, too, for the moment did Mary Dyer. The other two started directly for Salem and went about the work to which they felt called, travelling as far as New Hampshire. The same day Christopher Holder was seized in Boston, ' Letter from Boston prison, in New England Judged, p. 133. ^ See letters of Henry Fell, Peter Pearson, Robert Malins, Peter Cowsnocke, and Philip Rose in the Swarthmore Collection. Peter Cowsnocke was from the Isle of Man, and with Philip Rose and Edward Teddes, both Warwickshire Friends, seems to have been lost at sea on the passage from Barbadoes to Rhode Island. (Henry Fell to Fox, Swarthmore Collection, iv. 182 ; Nicholson to Margaret Fell, 3rd April 1660, Swarthmore Collection, iv. 107 ; and record cited in William White's Friends in Warwickshire, p. 23). Henry Fell, Robert Malins from Bandon, Ireland, Ann Cleaton, Marmaduke Stephenson, and Peter Pearson, another Yorkshireman, were the other five of the party. 8o QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i when on his way to England, was kept in prison two months, and then banished " on pain of death." ^ While he was still in prison, Mary Dyer came to Boston in company with Mary Scott and Hope Clifton of Providence, and five days later William Robinson and Marmaduke Stephenson, having returned from their eastern journey, were apprehended. With these men there were a number of other Friends who had been " convinced," and who came up with them to Boston, " moved of the Lord," as the old account has it, " to look your bloody laws in the face and to accompany those who should suffer by them." ^ In this strange group of volunteers were Daniel Gould of Newport, Robert Harper of Sandwich, William King, Hannah Phelps, Mary Trask, Provided Southwick, and Margaret Smith of " the first fruits " of Salem, and Alice Cowland, who brought linen with her to wrap the dead bodies of those who were to be martyred 1 * It is easy for us, at this comfortable distance, in an ordered society in which one believes what he wants to believe — or peradventure believes nothing at all — to say that these Friends walked of their own accord into the lion's den, that they knew the teeth of this new law would bite, and that they should have remained in safe territory. That is undoubtedly true, but it indicates a superficial acquaintance with the spirit of these Quakers. There are persons, or at least there once were, who find all their life-values altered and all their utilitarian calculations shifted by an inner impulsion which says irresistibly, " thou must ! " These Friends loved their lives and their homes as much as others did — they would have preferred ' The death sentence is to be executed ' ' in case he be found within this jurisdiction three daies after the next shipp now bound thence to England be departed from this harbor. ' ' — Records of Massachusetts Colony, vol. iv. part i. P- 391- ^ New England Judged, p. 119. William Robinson in a letter to George Fox says : " The Lord did lay it upon me to try their law." ' These Friends were confined for two months and were then sentenced to receive the following punishments : Daniel Gould thirty lashes ; Robert Harper and William King fifteen each ; Margaret Smith, Mary Trask, and Provided Southwick ten each. Alice Cowland, Hannah Phelps, Mary Scott, and Hope Clifton were "delivered over to the Governor to be admonished." CH. IV THE MARTYRS 8i the life of comfort to the hard prison and the gallows rope if they could have taken the line of least resistance with inward peace, but that was impossible to them. They were as sensitive to the call of duty as the musician is to the power of harmony ; they could no more ignore what seemed to them " the movings of the Lord " than a creator of beauty can ignore the laws of his art. They were not gifted with psychological analysis, and they did not raise the question whether these " calls " and " mov- ings" were due to "auto-suggestion," or were actually from the mouth of God. They had learned to obey the visions which they believed were heavenly, and they had grown accustomed to go straight ahead where the Voice, which they believed to be Divine, called them. They were commissioned to plant the truth in Massa- chusetts, and they "could not do otherwise" in this crisis than go up and " look the law in the face." Their course, I admit, was not " rational," in the narrow sense of rational, but the great life of loyalty and sacrifice never runs in any narrow groove of " pure " rationality. It cannot be explained and plumbed by utilitarian formulae, for life is always richer than any crystallised rules and concepts about it ; but it turns out in the sweeps of history that to die for a truth, to be loyal to vision even on the gallows, is as rational a course as that of the compromiser who saves his neck and puts up with half a truth ! In any case there can be no question that these banished Quakers who came back believed that they were " moved " to do so, and were convinced in their minds that the God who led them into danger would use their deaths to advance the truth more than their lives could advance it. It was plainly in this faith that they came. Here is William Robinson's testimony : "On the 8th day of the 8th Month, 1659, in the after part of the day, in Travelling betwixt Newport in Rhode Island and Daniel Gould's house, with my dear Brother, Christopher Holder, the Word of the Lord came expressly to me, which did fill me immediately with Life and Power, and heavenly Love, by which G 82 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i he constrained me, and commanded me to pass to the Town of Boston, to lay down my life, in his Will, for the Accomplishing of His Service, which He had to be performed at the Day appointed. To which heavenly voice I presently yielded Obedience, not questioning the Lord how He would bring the Thing to pass, since I was a Child, and Obedience was Demanded of me by the Lord, who filled me with living Strength and Power from His heavenly Presence, which at that time did mightily Overshadow me, and my Life at that time did say Amen to what the Lord required of me, and had Commanded me to do, and wilUngly was I given up from that time, to this Day, to do and perform the Will of the Lord, whatever became of my Body ; for the Lord had said unto me, ' thy Soul shall rest in Everlasting Peace, and thy Life shall enter into Rest, for being Obedient to the God of thy life.' I was a Child, and durst not question the Lord in the least, but rather was willing to lay down my Life, than to bring Dishonour to the Lord ; and as the Lord made me willing, dealing Gently and Kindly with me, as a Tender Father by a Faithful Child, whom he dearly Loves, so the Lord did deal with me in Ministering his Life unto me, which gave and gives me Strength to perform what the Lord required of me ; and still as I did and do stand in need, he Ministered and Ministreth more Strength, and Virtue, and heavenly Power and Wisdom, whereby I was and am made strong in God, not fearing what Man shall be suffered to do unto me." ^ Marmaduke Stephenson's testimony is of like import and is withal a beautiful account of a simple, guileless man's call to stern duty : "In the beginning of the year 1655, I was at the Plough in the east parts of Yorkshire in Old England, near the place where my outward Being was, and as I walked after the Plough, I was filled with the Love and the Presence of the Living God which did Ravish my Heart when I felt it ; for it did increase and abound in me like a Living Stream, so did the Love and Life of God run through me like precious Ointment, giving a pleasant Smell, which made me stand still ; and as I stood a little still, with my Heart and Mind stayed on the Lord, the Word of the Lord came to me in a still small Voice, which I did hear perfectly, saying to me, in the Secret of my Heart and Conscience, ' I have Ordained Thee a prophet unto the Nations.' And at ' Written in Boston Gaol, 19th of 8th month, 1659, in Bishop's New England Judged, pp. 127-129. CH. IV THE MARTYRS 83 the hearing of the Word of the Lord I was put to a stand, being that I was but a Child for a Weighty Matter. So at the time appointed, Barbadoes was set before me, unto which I was required of the Lord to go, and leave my dear and loving Wife and tender Children ; For the Lord said unto me immediately by his Spirit, That he would be a Husband to my Wife, and as a Father to my Children, and they should not want in my Absence, for he would provide for them when I was gone. And I believed that the Lord would perform what he had spoken, because I was made willing to give up myself to his Work and Service (with my dear Brother), under the Shadow of His Wings, who hath made us willing to lay down our Lives for His own name Sake. So, in Obedience to the Living God, I made preparation to pass to Barbadoes in the 4th month, 1658. So, after some time, I had been on the said Island in the Service of God, I heard that New England had made a Law to put the Servants of the Living God to death, if they returned after they were sentenced away, which did come near to me at that time ; and as I considered the Thing, and pondered it in my Heart, immediately came the Word of the Lord unto me, saying, Thou knowest not but that thou mayst go thither. But I kept this Word in my Heart, and did not declare it to any until the time Appointed. So, after that, a Vessel was made ready for Rhode Island, which I passed in. So, after a little time that I had been there, visiting the Seed which the Lord hath Blessed, the Word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Go to Boston, with thy Brother, William Robinson. And at His Command I was Obedient, and gave up myself to do His Will, that so His Work and Service may be accomplished; For, he had said to me. That he had a great Work for me to do; which is now come to pass : And for yielding Obedience to, and obeying the Voice and Command of the Everlasting God, which created Heaven and Earth, and the Fountains of Waters, Do I, with my dear Brother, suffer outward Bonds near unto Death. And this is given forth to be upon Record, that all people may know, who hear it, That we canie not in our own Wills, but in the Will of God. Given forth by me, who am known to Men by the name of Marmaduke Stephenson, But who have a new Name given me, which the World knows not of, written in the book of Life.^ Written in Boston-prison in the 8th Month, 1659." ^ New England Judged, pp. 131-133. 84 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i Mary Dyer wrote in a similar strain : " I am by many charged with the guiltiness of my own blood, in my coming to Boston. But I am therein clear and justified by the Lord in whose will I came. ... I have no self-ends, the Lord knoweth, for if my life were freely granted by you, it would not avail me, so long as I should daily hear or see the sufferings of these people, my dear brethren and seed, with whom my life is bound up, as I have done these two years. ... It is not my own life I seek (for I choose rather to suffer with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of Egypt) but the Life of the seed which I know the Lord hath blessed. . . . Do you think you can restrain those whom you call 'cursed Quakers' from coming among you, by anything you can do to them ! God hath a Seed here among you for whom we have suffered and yet suffer and the Lord of the harvest will send more laborers to gather this seed. In love and in the spirit of meekness, Mary Dyer."1 These three were brought before the General Court on the 19th of October and asked why they had come. " In obedience to the call of the Lord," was their answer. Governor Endicott was plainly embarrassed, and, hesitat- ing to take the final step, he sent the prisoners back to the jail. The next day after the morning sermon which had called loudly for extreme measures with this " cursed sect," ^ the prisoners were called and given this sentence : " Hearken, you shall be led back to the place from whence you came and from thence to the place of execution, to be hanged on the gallows till you are dead." " The will of the Lord be done," was Mary Dyer's response. " Take her away, Marshall," called the Governor. " Yea, joyfully shall I go," answered the unmoved woman.^ The execution was set for the 27th. As the time approached the thoughtful people, those who loved free- dom and had suffered in Old England for their own bold views, began to revolt in spirit against the violence and cruelty about to be enacted. Many were "amazed and ^ New England Judged, pp. 288-291. ^ Itid. p. 120. * The death sentence of these three Friends is given in Records of Massachusetts Colony, vol. iv. part i. p. 383. The court ordered ' ' That the Rev. Mr. Zackery Simes and Mr. John Norton repair to the prison and tender their endeavours to make the prisoners sensible of their approaching danger and prepare them for their approaching end. " — Ibid. p. 383. CH. IV THE MARTYRS 85 wondered," in the quaint language of the day, " the thing struck among them." A multitude of citizens flocked about the prison on the morning of the execution, and " William Robinson put his head out of his window and spoke to the people concerning the things of God," and they listened with serious attention.^ An officer endeavoured to disperse the crowd, but finding that he was unable to do it, he rushed to the prison " in a fret and heat, furiously hurling some of us down stairs, and shut us up in a low dark 'cub' where we could not see the people." ^ Then there breaks out this fine account of the last moments together, written by one who was in the company : " Shut up in this dark and solitary place we sat waiting upon the Lord. It was a time of Love, for though the world hated us and despitefully used us, yet the Lord was pleased in a wonder- ful manner to manifest His supporting Love and kindness to us in our innocent suffering. And especially the two Worthies [Robinson and Stephenson] who had near finished their course bore themselves with a heavenly cheerfulness and they spake many sweet and heavenly sayings of comfort." ^ Lest the victims might speak and stir up the people again, drums were beat as they marched to the gallows. They did try to speak, but the drums made such a din that the people heard only the words, " This is the day of your visitation." But their faces spoke in spite of the drums, for " glorious signs of heavenly joy and gladness were beheld in their countenances." They walked hand in hand, with Mary Dyer in the middle. " Are you not ashamed to walk thus between two young men ? " asked the coarse official. " No," replied the exalted woman, "this is to me the hour of the greatest joy I ever had in this world. No ear can hear, nor tongue can utter and no heart can understand the sweet incomes and the refreshings of the Spirit of the Lord which I now feel." * The doomed men, on the steps of the gallows, gave their last brief call to the people to follow the Light of Christ, ' " Daniel Gould's Narrative " in New England Judged, p. 476. Gould was a fellow-prisoner. ^ Itid. p. 476. ° Gould's Narrative, ibid. pp. 476-477. * New England Judged, p. 134. 86 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i and the two men sealed their faith with their lives. At the last moment Mary Dyer, her arms and legs already bound and her face covered with a handkerchief, loaned for the purpose by her old pastor of the Boston Church, the Rev. Mr. Wilson, was "reprieved." The sudden " reprieve " of Mary Dyer was in reality a piece of acting : there had been no intention of actually hanging her. John Winthrop, Jr., Governor of Connecticut, had pleaded with the magistrates of Boston, " as on his bare knees," not to hang the Quakers ; Governor Temple of Acadia and Nova Scotia had offered to take them away from Massachusetts and to provide for them at his own expense ; finally Mary Dyer's son, William Dyer, had begged for his mother's life. Under these circumstances the Court decided not to hang the condemned woman. The Colonial Records for 1 8th October 1659 contain this order: " It is ordered that the said Mary Dyer shall have liberty for forty-eight hours to depart out of this Jurisdiction, after which time, being found therein, she is to be forthwith executed. And it is further ordered that she shall be carried to the place of execution and there to stand upon the Gallows with a rope about her neck until the Rest be executed ; and then to return to the prison and remain as aforesaid." ^ She stubbornly refused to accept her life, if the law was still to remain against "the suffering seed." She was, however, set on horseback and carried away toward Rhode Island. After a short stay at home, she went on a religious visit to Shelter Island in Long Island Sound. We get one glimpse of her from John Taylor, who was labouring in Shelter Island at the time of this visit. He says : "One who came to Shelter Island was Mary Dyer. She was a comly woman and a grave matron and even shined in the Image of God. We had several brave meetings there together and the Lord's power and presence was with us gloriously."^ But "the fire and hammer" were in her soul and she ^ Records of Massachusetts Colony, iv. part i. p. 384. 2 Memoir of John Taylor, p. 2i. CH. IV THE MARTYRS 87 could not stay away from " the bloody town of her sad and heavy experience." " She said," John Taylor tells us, " that she must go and desire the repeal of that wicked law against God's people and offer up her life there." She arrived in Boston the 21st of May 1660. "Are you the same Mary Dyer that was here before ? " asked Endicott. " I am the same." " You will own yourself a Quaker, will you not ? " " I own myself to be reproachfully so called." Then followed the expected sentence.^ " This is no more than what thou saidst before." " But now," said the Governor, " it is to be executed." " I came," she said solemnly, " in obedience to the will of God at your last General Court, desiring you to repeal your unrighteous laws of banishment on pain of death ; and that same is my word now, and earnest request, although I told you that if you refused to repeal them, the Lord would send others of His servants to witness against them." Her husband, one of the foremost citizens of Rhode Island and a founder of the Aquidneck Colony, pleaded for his wife's life.^ She was offered her life, as she stood on the ladder of the gallows, if she would return home. " Nay I cannot," was her firm answer. " In obedience to the will of the Lord God I came and in His will I abide faithful to death." She was asked if she would like one of the Elders to pray for her, and she answered in the simplicity of her spirit, " Nay, first a child, then a young man, then a strong man before an Elder," and then with words about her " eternal happiness " she went to meet the Saviour " in whose image she shined " even here below. ' The only other capital execution was that of William Leddra of Barbadoes * — a strange place, we should think to-day, to furnish to the city of Boston a martyr for ' The sentence is given in Records of Massachusetts Colony, vol. iv. part i. p. 419. " See William Dyer's letter to Governor Endicott in Roger's Mary Dyer, pp. 94-97- ' John Taylor's testimony is: "She has gone into Eternal life and glory forever."— 0^. cit. p. 22. * He was a native of Cornwall, England, but had for some time made his home in Barbadoes, where he had been an " approved minister." 88 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i spiritual religion. He had already, like his aged friend William Brend, suffered almost unspeakable torture from whippings and hard prison experiences — " in the bloody den," as Bishop calls it — and had been banished on pain of death. He returned and was re-imprisoned in December 1660. He was chained to a log of wood and kept all winter in " the miserable cold " of an unheated prison. The charges against him were sympathy with those who had been executed, refusal to remove his hat, his use of thee and thou — in fact, the crime of being a Quaker. When he saw that he was to be sentenced under the Act of October 1658, he appealed as an English subject for a trial under the laws of England, but his appeal was refused. He was then urged to recant, and was promised his life if he would " conform." " What," he answered, " act so that every man who meets me would say, 'this is the man that has forsaken the God of his salvation ! ' " Remaining unshaken, he was sentenced to death, the date set for the execution being the 14th of March.^ He died in the same triumphant spirit which characterised his companions in martyrdom. " I testify," he wrote shortly before his death, " in the fear of the Lord and witness with a trembling pen, that the noise of the whip on my back, all the imprisonments, and banishments on pain of death, and the loud threatenings of a halter did no more affright me, through the strength and power of God, tha:n if they had threatened to bind a spider's web to my finger. ... I desire, as far as the Lord draws me, to follow my forefathers and brethren in suffering and in joy. My spirit waits and worships at the feet of Immanuel." ^ On the day before he went to death, he wrote a beautiful and tender letter to " the Little Flock of Christ," in which he said : "The sweet influences of the Morning Star, like a flood, distilling into my habitation [a dark cold room, "little larger than a saw-pit," where he was still chained to a log] have so filled me with the joy of the Lord in the beauty of holiness that my spirit is as if it did not inhabit a tabernacle of clay, but 1 New England Judged, p. 317. 2 /^j^_ pp_ 296-297. CH. IV THE MARTYRS 89 is wholly swallowed up in the bosom of eternity from whence it had its beginning. ... As the flowing of the ocean doth fill every creek and branch and then retires again toward its own being and fulness, leaving a savour behind, so doth the Life and Power of God flow into our hearts making us partakers of His Divine Nature, therefore let this Life alone be your joy and consolation." ^ He died as a martyr should, in calm faith, with noble bearing. The spectators bore v/itness that " the Lord did mightily appear in the man." ^ As Mary Dyer's lifeless body hung from the gallov^^s and swung in the wind Humphrey Atherton of Boston pointed to it and said in jest — "She hangs there as a flag ! " Like many things said in jest on historic occasions, the word was literally true. She did hang as a flag — she was a sign and a symbol of a deathless loyalty — and it was a sign which the wayfaring man could read. Her death showed, as did also the deaths of the other martyrs, that, whether right or wrong in their fundamental beliefs, a people had come to these shores who were not to be turned aside by any dangers or terrors which mortal man could devise, who were pledged to loyalty to the voice of God in their souls and ready to follow it, even though it took them to the hardest suffering and death. Every martyr was, thus, in truth a flag. ' An "Epistle to the Society of the Little Flock of Christ," in New Engla?id Judged, pp. 299-302. ^ From a letter written by Thomas Wilkie of Barbadoes. — Bowden's History, i- 315- Joseph and Jane Nicholson of Cumberland, England, fell under the provisions of the capital law and they were in prison in irons when Mary Dyer was hung, but for some reason — for fear that their execution would excite the common people of Boston, Joseph Nicholson says — they were allowed to go free. Joseph Nicholson wrote The Standard of the Lord lifted up in New England, London, 1660. Edward Wharton of Salem was fellow-prisoner with William Leddra through all his last imprisonment and barely escaped with his life. For saying that Robinson and Stephenson were wickedly killed and that the guilt of their blood was greater than he could bear, he was whipped with twenty lashes and fined twenty pounds. Early in the year 1660 he was arrested in his house for being a Quaker and brought before Governor Endicott. He was kept nearly a year in prison, through the winter, being in the same ' ' cub " with William Leddra, and at the Court which sentenced Leddra to death, Wharton was banished on pain of death, and given ten days to leave the jurisdiction. He stayed in Boston and attended his friend to the gallows and caught his lifeless body as it fell from the scaffold, and with three other brave Friends he gave the body burial. He then went quietly to his home and wrote to the authorities of Boston that he was there and expected to stay there! — New England Judged, pp. 315-325 and p. 342. Besse, ii. 220-221. CHAPTER V THE king's missive While these Friends were thus joyously dedicating their lives to purchase freedom to worship God, and to win the privilege of holding the faith which to their souls seemed true and spiritual, their fellow-believers in England were putting forth every exertion in their power to stop "the vein of innocent blood " which was flowing in Boston. George Fox, an extraordinarily sensitive, sympathetic, and even telepathic person, had been deeply moved by the sufferings of those who were in some measure his disciples. He says : " When those were put to death (in New England) I was in prison at Lancaster, and I had a perfect sense of their sufferings as though it had been myself, and as though the halter had been put about my own neck, though we had not at that time heard qfit."'^ Christopher Holder and his companions, John Copeland and John Rous, were now in England, visible " witnesses," with their cropped ears, of the way the bearers of the gospel of inward Light were treated in the Puritan Colony. Samuel Shattuck, Josiah Southwick, and Nicholas Phelps of Salem, banished from their home for espousing the cause of the Quakers, were also in England bearing their testimony. In 1659 Humphrey Norton told his powerful story of suffering and wrongs.^ This was followed in 1660 by The Standard of the Lord 1 Fox's Journal, i. 507. Fox is probably incorrect here in regard to the date of his experience. News of the martyrdom of Robinson and Stephenson reached England in February 1660 (see Dewsbury's account and A. Parker's letter to Margaret Fell, Swarthmore Collection, 1. 169), while Fox was not imprisoned in Lancaster until May i65o. ' The New England Ensign. 90 cH. V THE KING'S MISSIVE 91 lifted up in New England, written by Joseph Nicholson, who with his wife had extensively laboured and greatly suffered in New England ; and the next year came the first edition of George Bishop's book, packed with an array of atrocious persecutions — his New England Judged, a copy of which King Charles II. read. It is said that the King was reading in Bishop's book the account of a Friend's appeal from the cruel course of the Colony to the privileges of the laws of England, and came upon Major-General Denison's slighting remark on authority and procedure in England. Denison, it seems, had met the Quakers' claim of a right to appeal to the English government for justice with the scoiiQng remark that it would do no good if they did. " This year," he said, "you will go and complain to Parliament, and the next year they will send out to see how it is, and the third year the government will be changed ! " ^ i.e. nothing will be done. The King was deeply impressed by this passage, and noted the difference between this language and the humble tone of the address from New England on the occasion of his accession. He called his courtiers and read the passage to them, and added : " Lo, these are my good subjects of New England, but I will put a stop to them ! " ^ In addition came a very concrete list of sufferings which was presented to the King in the form of a Petition signed by the men who had been banished from Massachusetts. The list contained the following items : 1. Two honest and innocent women stripped stark naked and searched in an inhuman manner. 2. Twelve strangers in that country, but freeborn of this nation, received twenty-three whippings, most of them with a whip of three cords with knots at the ends. 3- Eighteen inhabitants of the country, being freeborn English, received twenty-three whippings. 4. Sixty-four imprisonments " of the Lord's people," amount- ing to five hundred and nineteen weeks. 5. Two beaten with pitched ropes, the blows amounting to an hundred and thirty-nine. ' New England Judged, p. 82. ^ Sewel's History, i. 492. 92 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES ek. i 6. An innocent old man banished from his wife and children, and for returning put in prison for above a year. 7. Twenty-five banished upon penalties of being whipped, or having their ears cut, or a hand branded. 8. Fines, amounting to a thousand pounds, laid upon the inhabitants for meeting together. 9. Five kept fifteen days without food. 10. One laid neck and heels in irons for sixteen hours. 11. One very deeply burnt in the right hand with an H after he had been beaten with thirty stripes. 12. One chained to a log of wood for the most part of twenty days in winter time. 13. Five appeals to England denied. 14. Three had their right ears cropped off. 15. One inhabitant of Salem, since banished on pain of death, had one-half of his house and land seized. 1 6. Two ordered sold as bond-servants. 17. Eighteen of the people of God banished on pain of death. 18. Three of the servants of God put to death.^ 19. Since the executions four more banished on pain of death and twenty-four hearvily fined for meeting to worship God.^ To offset these vivid portrayals of wrongs endured, the authorities in Massachusetts presented their side of the case. They had sent a Petition to King Charles, soon after his accession, expressing their loyalty to his government and hope of his favour to their Colony. " May it please your Majesty," they wrote, " in the day you happily know that you are king over your Brittish Israel to cast a favourable eye upon your poore Mehibboseth," i.e. Massachusetts Colony. In this address they took occasion to defend themselves for their treat- ment of the Quakers, by making the latter out to be a type of persons not fit to live on the earth. " They are open blasphemers," the address says, "open .seducers from the glorious Trinity, the Lord's Christ, the blessed gospel, and from the Holy Scriptures as the rule of life. They are open enemies to the government itself as established in the hand of any but men of their own principles. They are malignant promoters of doctrines ^ William Leddra was executed after this was written. " Besse's Sufferings, i. pp. xxx.-.xxxi. CH.V THE KING'S MISSIVE 93 directly tending to subvert both our church and state." ^ In addition to this Petition to the King the Court of Massachusetts sent an address to Parliament and instruc- tions to its London Agent, Leverett, to do his utmost to prevent an action which would tie the hands of the colonial authorities from acting in their own way with the Quakers.^ Richard Bellingham also wrote a pamphlet setting forth the necessity of suppressing the Quakers. " There is more danger," he declared, " in this People to trouble and overcome England than in the King of the Scotts and the Popish Princes of Germany." ^ After serious consultation among Friends in England it was decided to lay the Quaker sufferings before the Privy Council, and it was arranged for Edward Burrough to prepare an Address to the King — " Some Considera- tions," it is modestly called — presenting the true situation and urging him to use his power to stop the persecution now going on in his Colony. He refutes point by point the charges in the " Petition and Address of the General Court" of Massachusetts. He denies that Quakers have ever been "impetuous or turbulent," that they have ever " lifted up a hand or made a turbulent gesture " against any authority either in Church or State, or that they have ever been " found with a carnal weapon about them," or that they had committed any crime, " saving, that they warned sinners to repent." Those who have gone to death in the Colony have been " martyred for the name of Christ," solely for a "difference in judgment and practice concerning spiritual things." He insists that these sufferers went to New England because they were " moved of the Holy Spirit " to go, and that those who have died there have died " for a good conscience " — which was the simple truth. When the news of William Leddra's execution reached ' Printed in Ruords of Massachusetts Colony, vol. iv. part i. pp. 450-453. Quoted also in Edward Burrough's ' ' Some Considerations Presented unto the King of England Being an Answer unto a Petition and Address of the General Court of Boston in New England." Works of Edward Burrough (London, 1672) pp. 756-763- '^ Hutchinson Collection, p. 329. ' Quoted in Howgil's Popish Inquisition, Works, p. 259. 94 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i the Friends in England, Edward Burrough sought an interview in person with the King. He said to the King, " There is a vein of innocent blood opened in thy dominions which will run over all, if it is not stopped." To which the King at once replied, " but I will stop that vein." "Then stop it speedily," said Burrough, "for we know not how many may soon be put to death." " As speedily as ye will. Call the Secretary and I will do it presently." ^ The secretary came and a mandamus was prepared on the spot. Edward Burrough pressed that it be despatched with haste. " But I have no occasion at present to send a ship thither," answered the King. " If you care to send one you may do it," and he gave Burrough the privilege of naming the messenger to carry the man- damus. Burrough at once named Samuel Shattuck, the Salem Quaker who had been banished from the Colony on pain of death ! and the King appointed him as his royal messenger. The Friends then chartered a ship of Ralph Goldsmith, himself a Quaker, and agreed with him for three hundred pounds to sail in ten days for Boston with the King's messenger and missive.^ The colonists were warned in advance by the colonial agent, Leverett, that the Quakers had brought their grievances to the notice of the King, and there was an ominous impression in the minds of many that they had much to fear from the new sovereign, who was known to have no sympathy with the theological or political ideals which were the very pillars of the New England common- wealth. It seemed wisest to bow somewhat to the threatening storm, and so an order was issued by the colonial authorities, permitting all Quakers then in prison " to depart and go for England." ^ This order released twenty-seven Quakers who were at the time in Boston prison, most of whom were " convinced " colonists, though the list included some newly arrived Quaker " publishers " : Elizabeth Hooton, Joan Brocksoppe, Mary Mallins, ^ See Sewel's History, i. 473. ''■ This account is taken from Fox's Journal, i. 507-509. ' Records of Massachusetts Colony, vol. iv. part i. p. 433. cH. V THE KING'S MISSIVE 95 Catherine Chattam, and John Burstow and Peter Pearson, who had already done extensive missionary work in the Colonies. Meantime another Friend was being doomed to death and was in imminent danger of execution. This was Wenlock Christison. His origin and antecedent history are unknown. He suddenly appears in New England leaving no clear trail behind him. He always claims to be a British subject and he once directly implies that he has come from England. Harrison, in his valuable monograph,! thinks that Christison was of Scottish descent and that the blood of the Covenanters flowed in his veins. At any rate he was possessed of martyr-fibre. He first comes to public notice as one among many Friends who were thrown into prison in Boston, 13th December 1660. He had just come from Salem and was evidently moving about from place to place, as the way opened for him to perform religious service. He was arrested, and banished on pain of death. After his release he visited Plymouth Colony, where he was imprisoned fourteen weeks, in cold winter weather, "tied neck and heels together," flogged "with twenty-seven cruel stripes on his naked body," and deprived of his Bible and clothes — "waistcoat, two other coats, hat and bag of linen " — to the value of four pounds for prison fees. This was for "coming into one Colony when he was banished from another." Being at length released, he returned to Boston and suddenly appeared before the Court, precisely as they were pronouncing sentence of death on William Leddra ! The magistrates were " struck with a great damp " when they saw another man " unconcerned for his life come to trample under the law of Death." " For a little space of time, there was silence in the Court, but recovering from the swoon, one of the Court cried out, ' Here is another, fetch him to the bar.' " ^ Then followed this dialogue : " Is your name Wenlock Christison ? " ' Harrison's Wenlock Christison and /he Friends in Talbot County, Maryland {Baltimore, 1878), p. 16. ^ New England Judged, p. 319. 96 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i " Yes." " Wast not thou banished on pain of death ? " " Yes, I was." " What dost thou here then ? " " I am come to warn you, that you shed no more blood." It was hoped that Leddra's death would awe him into submission, and on the day of that Friend's execution Christison was given an opportunity to renounce his views and so save his life. " Nay," was his reply, " I shall not change my religion, nor seek to save my life. I do not intend to deny my Master, and if I lose my life for Christ's sake I shall save it." His brave manner and saintly bearing made a profound impression on some of the magistrates, and Governor Endicott had difficulty in securing a capital sentence. For two weeks there was a stern division in the Court, and " a spirit of confusion." A determined minority stood out against " the bloody course," and urged a change of policy. Governor Endicott was so incensed by the opposition that he struck his fist on the table and declared, " I could find it in my heart to go back home " [i.e. to England]. " Record those who will not consent — I thank God I am not afraid to give judgment." He then pronounced the sentence of death to be executed on 1 3th June 1661.^ Then the calm, unmoved victim spoke these solemn words : " The will of the Lord be done. In the will of God I came amongst you, and in His counsel I stand, feeling His eternal power, that will uphold me to the last gasp. Be it known unto you all, that if you have power to take my life from me, my soul will enter into everlasting rest and peace with God ; and if you have power to take my life from me, the which I question, I believe, you will never more take Quakers' lives from them. Note my words : Do not think to ' Richard Russell was one of the magistrates who refused to give his consent to the prisoner's death, and the whole Court was much moved by the receipt at this very time of Edward Wharton's letter saying that though banished on pain of death he was at his home in Salem and intended to remain there, about his occupation. See Besse, ii. 223, and Sewel, i. 488-490. cH. V THE KING'S MISSIVE 97 weary out the living God by taking away the lives of His servants. What do you gain by it? For the last man you put to death, here are five come in his room} And if you have power to take my life from me God can raise up the same principle of life in ten of His servants and send them among you in my room!' He was not called upon, however, to suffer his penalty, and he lived to see his predictions fulfilled. Just before the time appointed for his hanging an order was granted for his release and for the liberation of a large number of Friends as related above. The release was due to the desire to propitiate those who were using the Quaker persecution as a ground for royal interference, for the magistrates realised that only by most delicate diplomacy could they preserve satisfactory relations with the mother- country, though they hardly suspected the humiliation which Goldsmith's ship was bringing them.^ Ralph Goldsmith, though buffeted in the early part of his voyage with heavy storms, brought his ship across in six weeks and anchored in the harbour on a " First- day." The people of the city flocked on board to ask for letters but were told that no letters would be delivered on " First-day " 1 They reported on shore that the ship was loaded with Quakers, some of them persons banished on pain of death. Samuel Shattuck tells it in his own quaint way as follows : "When wee came into Boston harbour many came on ship- board for Newes and Letters ; But were somewhat struck in Amaze when they saw what wee were. When wee came on shoar," Shattuck continues, " wee found all very still and a very great calme ; the moderate sort (as I met them) Rejoiced to see me and some of the violent wee met as men chained and bowed down and could not look us in the face." ^ ' The five newly arrived "publishers of truth." ^ There is an entry in the Massachusetts Colonial Records which appears to be a letter from Wenlock Christison signifying his willingness to depart from that jurisdiction if he is granted his freedom, adding, " I know not yt ever I shall com into it any more." [Massachusetts Archives, x. 273). He did, however, continue to labour within that jurisdiction and was various times after- wards arrested and punished. (See New England Judged, pp. 433, 440, 457, and 467). 3 Aspinwall Papers, part i. p. 160. H 98 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES br. , So they passed on to the home of the Governor and asked for admission to his presence. As they insisted that they could deliver their message only to the Governor himself, they were ushered into his presence, Samuel Shattuck wearing his hat. Endicott in anger ordered the hat taken off, which was done by a servant. Where- upon Shattuck produced his credentials as a royal messenger and showed the mandamus. The Governor at once uncovered and ordered the Quaker's hat to be given back to him, and then he read the mandamus which was as follows : " Charles R. " Trusty and well-beloved, we greet you well. Having been informed that several of our subjects among you, called Quakers, have been and are imprisoned by you, whereof some have been executed, and others (as hath been represented unto us) are in danger to undergo the like ; we have thought fit to signify our pleasure in that behalf for the future, and do hereby require, that if there be any of those people called Quakers amongst you, now already condemned to suffer death or other corporal punishment ; or that are imprisoned, and obnoxious to the like condemnation, you are to forbear to proceed any further therein ; but that you forthwith send the said persons (whether condemned or imprisoned) over into their own kingdom of England, together with their respective crimes or offences laid to their charge ; to the end such course may be taken with them here as shall be agreeable to our laws and their demerits. And for so doing, these our letters shall be your sufficient warrant and discharge. " Given at our Court, at Whitehall, the 9th day of September 1 66 1, in the 13th year of our reign. "To our trusty and well-beloved John Endicott, Esq., and to all and every other governor or governors of our plantations of New England, and of all the colonies thereunto belonging, that now are, or hereafter shall be ; and to all and every the ministers and officers of our plantations and colonies whatsoever, within the continent of New England. " By his Majesty's command, "William Morris."^ 1 This incident is happily and beautifully told by Whittier in "The King's Missive." Whittier's poem provoked severe criticism from the Rev. Dr. George E. Ellis, on the ground that the poem was historically inaccurate, and consider- able discussion ensued. The substance of the discussion is given in Pickard's John Greenleaf Whittier, pp. 775-785,. cH. V THE KING'S MISSIVE 99 It was an extremely trying order and a humiliating situation. To send the prisoners to England was plainly out of the question, and the order was imperative that they should " proceed no further," either with death sentences or with " other corporal punishment." " We shall obey his Majesty's commands," was the Governor's laconic decision as he turned to Samuel Shattuck, and this order" was issued : " To William Salter, keeper of the prison at Boston, you are requested, by authority and order of the General Court, to release and discharge the Quakers who at present are in your custody. See that you do not neglect this. By order of the Court. " Edward Rawson, Secretary." ^ As a result of this order a large release of prisoners was made, among them the venerable Nicholas Upsall who had lain in the prison of his own city for two years. John Chamberlein, who had been convinced of the Quaker truth at the gallows, when Robinson and Stephenson were executed, was also among those who were liberated, and the Friends gathered at his house for their meeting of rejoicing, Chamberlein's house being at this period the regular meeting-place of the Friends in Boston. Shattuck's letter, already quoted from, gives a fresh impression of the joy and triumph which the new turn of affairs brought to the long-suffering band : " The coming of our ship is of very wonderfull service, for the Bowells of the moderate sort are greatly refreshed throughout the Country, and many mouths are now opened, which were before shutt and some of them now say, Its the welcomest ship that ever came into this Land." The authorities of the Colony had, as we have seen, anticipated royal interposition and had already changed their policy of dealing with the Quakers, but none the less this " missive " from the King marks an epoch in the history of colonial Puritans. They might congratulate Charles the Second and ask him to " cast favourable eyes on poore Mehibboseth," but in their hearts they knew that a dangerous turn of the tide had set in, and that the * Besse, ii. 226. Sewel, i. 492-496. lOO QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i enemy of their faith and of their ideals was now their sovereign. They no longer had behind them the great moral and spiritual England of the Commonwealth, and they were never again to have an entirely free hand in working out their lofty vision of a New England, which in their dreams was to be a New Jerusalem — a Republic of the saints of God. They had fought their Armageddon and it was a drawn battle. It was now unniistakably evident that the Colony must henceforth be shared with these unwelcome Quaker guests. The founders of it had used their extreme measures to keep the Colony immune and they had failed. Their own people were in revolt against their system of expulsion and extermination, they saw ten Quakers coming for every one who was killed, and now one of these same Quakers, banished on pain of death, had come boldly in as the inviolable messenger of an anti-Puritan king. " Give Mr. Shattuck his hat ! " " The King's command shall be obeyed ! " were two sentences which must have cost brave old Endicott profound pain. There was a momentary lull in the storm of persecu- tion, but it was only a temporary relief and no surrender, for so long as John Norton remained the guardian of orthodoxy, and so long as John Endicott was left as the representative embodiment of the Puritan ideal, there could be little peace for the Quaker, with his claim of an inward Light, even though there were a danger that King Charles might occasionally be stirred to call a halt, and to show that he meant what he said in the Declaration of Breda.^ On the constitutional point of transferring their prisoners to England to be tried the colonists did not yield an iota, and in the weighty deliberations which followed upon their duties to the King they showed a good measure of the spirit which swept through New England again more than a hundred years later. They declared that their " patent " was the foundation of the 1 " We do declare liberty to tender consciences, and that no man shall be dis- quieted or called in question for differences of opinion in matters of religion." CH. V THE KING'S MISSIVE loi rights of the Colony, and they asserted that "any im- position prejudicial to the country, contrary to any just laws of ours not repugnant to the laws of England, is an infringment of our right " ; and they further declared that, "it may well stand with the loyalty and obedience of subjects to plead with their princes against all such as shall endeavour the violation of their privileges."^ But from this time forward frequent interferences occurred on the part of the King. It is true that he informed the Massachusetts officials, through their agents, that Parliament had made sharp laws against the Quakers, and "we are content you should do the like,"^ but in the same letter the King insists that all public officers in the Colony shall be chosen without reference to their religious opinions and profession, and royal commissions after this date more than once called a halt on Quaker persecution, as we shall see. It is with some humiliation that we are compelled to thank Charles II. for the first stay of persecution, since interferences by a royal prerogative later endangered the colonial charters and attempted to thwart the democratic experiment of the colonists in every way possible, but the harried Quaker took his temporary relief without much compunction ! For the moment, however, the relief was slight. The old law inflicting banishment on pain of death had already been altered, before the King's " missive " came, and a new law had been drawn up designed to be more effective and at the same time not so obnoxious to the Home Government, or so revolting to the people. This new law, passed the 22nd of May 1661, was the atrocious "Cart and Whip Act." It began with the statement that the Court was " desirous to try all means, with as much lenity as may consist with our safety, to prevent the intrusion of the Quakers," followed with the usual amount of vigorous description of the persons so named. It was then enacted that any person " not giving civil respect by the usual gestures, or by any other means ^ Records of Massachusetts Colony, vol. iv. part ii. p. 25. ^ Colonial Papers, 28th June 1662, I02 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i manifesting himself to be a Quaker, shall ... be stripped naked from the middle upwards and be tied to a cart's tail and whipped through the town, and from thence immediately conveyed to the constable of the next town, towards the borders of our jurisdictions, and so from constable to constable till they be conveyed through any of the outwardmost towns of our jurisdiction." If " such vagabond Quaker " returns, he is to be whipped out again, and so on for three times. The fourth time he is to be branded on the left shoulder with the letter R and whipped out of the Colony. Then, if finally the said Quaker proves to be "an incorrigible rogue and enemy of the common peace," he is to suffer, if there is anything left of him, under the old law of lesS.-' Some of the Friends who were liberated from prison when the change of policy was initiated, were punished under this new law. Peter Pearson and Judith Brown were selected, among the prisoners in custody when the Act was passed, to be the first examples of its cruelty. They had both been banished and had returned " to look the law in the face," and probably for this reason they were chosen to suffer at the cart-tail. They received twenty stripes on their naked backs as they went through Boston on their way out of the "jurisdiction." All the other Friends set free at this great " delivery " were ordered to be driven out of the territory by a guard of soldiers. John Chamberlein was whipped nine times at the cart's tail " because he suffered a meeting at his house," ^ and was liberated a second time by the King's missive. George Wilson, also a native citizen, was whipped with Chamberlein through three towns, the executioner using for the purpose an ingeniously cruel whip which tore the flesh in barbarous fashion.' Josiah Southwick and Nicholas Phelps had returned from their banishment in the autumn of 1661. Phelps, whose constitution had been undermined by what he had undergone, died soon after his arrival. Southwick, with almost excessive Quaker frankness, appeared before ^ Records of Massachusetts Colony^ vol. iv. part ii. p. 2. * Asfinwall Papers, part i. p. 161. ' Besse, ii. 224. CH. V THE KING'S MISSIVE 103 the authorities and announced his return to his country. He was apprehended and whipped through Boston, Roxbury, and Dedham, and then carried fifteen miles and left in the wilderness. The next morning he fearlessly returned to his home in Salem, having told his torturers that he " cared no more for what they could do to him than for a feather blown in the air." ^ The terrible " Cart and Whip Act " was re-enacted, in slightly modified form, the 8th of October 1662, and under this law some of the most harrowing tortures were inflicted.^ Two instances, both of which are historically too important to be omitted, will sufifice, and many of the details can be spared. The first instance is the case of Alice Ambrose, Mary Tomkins, and Ann Coleman. These three Friends, about whose earlier history little is known, had come from England, probably in the summer of 1662, with a sense of a call to pioneer service in the Colonies. Their chief interest to us lies in the fact that they were " the first publishers " of the Quaker message in what later came to be a great Quaker centre, namely, the Piscataqua region — particularly the country about Dover and Portsmouth, New Hampshire — and also in the region which they call " the Province of Mayn." * Edward Wharton, of Salem, one of the foremost of the native Quaker ministers of the early period, and George Preston, also of Salem, with two of the English women, Alice Ambrose and Mary Tomkins, made their way to Dover, and took up their headquarters in an inn there, where they received many inquirers, made many convincements, and solidly established their truth in the minds of a group of the Dover people, though they came into violent collision with the ministers of the town, especially with one whom they call "priest Rayner." They found here in Dover a prepared group ready for their views, much like the groups which had existed in ' New England Judged, p. 356. ' Records cf Massachusetts Colony, vol. iv. part ii. p. 59. ' These women were not actually the first Quaker missionaries to reach the Piscataqua region, as W^illiam Robinson and Marmaduke Stephenson had already been there in 1659 (see Bishop, p. 117), though we have no details of their work. I04 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i Newport, Sandwich, and Salem. There had come to the Piscataqua region, at an earlier time, some who were unwelcome in Massachusetts because of their too free religious views. There were survivors of the great Hutchinson controversy still living in the region, and the ministry of the famous Hansard KnoUys, the third minister to come to the Dover church, had led many in the direction of Anabaptist ideas. The result was that the little band of " publishers " left behind, as they pushed farther eastward, a goodly number of believers in their way of life. From Dover they crossed over the Piscataqua river into the Province of Maine, by invitation of Major Shapleigh, a magistrate and leading citizen in the town- ship of Kittery, evidently in the part since set off as the township of Eliot. " He was an enquiring man," Bishop tells us,^ a seeker, and he " kept a priest in his house " and had a room set apart for public worship. Under the ministry of his new guests he and his wife were "con- vinced of truth," and became "obedient" to their new light, and " truth got great dominion in the hearts of the people there," which means that a Quaker meeting was begun in the Province of Maine. After a thorough canvas of that region the four Friends returned to Massachusetts. Later in the year, as winter was approaching, the two women, with Ann Coleman as companion, decided to revisit those who had " received the truth in Piscataqua river." They had not been long in Dover before the magistrates were stirred up by one of the ministers — the " priest Rayner," who had disputed with them on the former visit — to apply the " Cart and Whip Act " to the visitors. The following order was issued by a deputy- magistrate named Walden : " To the constables of Dover, Hampton, Salisbury, Newbury, Rawley, Ipswich, Wenham, Lynn, Boston, Roxbury, Dedham; and until these vagabond Quakers are carried out of this jurisdic- tion. You and every of you are required, in the Kings Majesty's name, to take these vagabond Quakers, Ann Coleman, ^ New England Judged, p. 363. CH. V THE KING'S MISSIVE 105 Mary Tomkins, Alice Ambrose, and make them fast to the cart's tail, arid driving the cart through your several towns, to whip them upon their backs, not exceeding ten stripes apiece on each of them, in each town, and so convey them from constable to constable till they come out of the jurisdiction." ^ It was in the heart of a northern wf inter when these women were stripped to the waist and tied to the cart to trudge under the lash through these eleven towns, the snow lying " half-leg-deep," as they passed through Hampton ; but we are told that "the presence of the Lord was so with them, in the extremity of their sufferings, that they sang in the midst of them to the astonishment of their enemies."^ Deliverance came unexpectedly in Salisbury, for Walter Barefoot asked to be made deputy-constable, and taking the matter into his own hands fearlessly set the women free.' The women went straight back toward Piscataqua river, revisited Major Shapleigh on the way, and then came into Dover, where they again endured treatment too cruel and barbarous to be told in detail.* The other extraordinary application of " the Cart and Whip Act" is the case of Elizabeth Hooton. She was the first woman " convinced " by Fox's preaching in England, and she was the first woman to manifest a gift for public ministry. She went through many dreadful persecutions in England, and finally laid down her life in the island of Jamaica.^ She was at the time of her New England suffering advanced in years, and had made her * This is dated at Dover, 22nd December 1662, and is signed by Richard Walden, though Bishop says that "priest Rayner" drew it up. When Alice Ambrose was aslced her name she said, "My name is written in the Lamb's book of Life." "Nobody here knows that book," answered Walden. — Ntw England Judged, p. 366. * New England Judged, p. 367. ' Bishop says that John Wheelwright, " an old priest," advised the constable to go on with the whipping, p. 368. * Besse, ii. 228. New England Judged, pp. 370-374. ^ In Devonshire House Portfolio, No. 3, there are many papers by Elizabeth Hooton, to the priests about 1651, to Cromwell, to the Mayor of London, and a number to the King. Portfolio 3, 27 gives her sufferings in New England ; 3, 35 is a lamentation for Boston in New England ; 3, 36 a lamentation for Boston and Cambridge in New England ; 3, 39 a threatening letter to the rulers of Boston ; 3, 40 lays open cruelty in New England at Boston, Cambridge, Salem, etc.; also 3i 42 and 3, 43 ; 3, 45 gives passages on New England. io6 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i way to Virginia from Barbadoes, and had travelled all the way from Virginia through incredible hardships to Boston, where she was at once thrust into prison. Being released from prison she was conveyed to the limit of the Colony and left in the wilderness, making her way as best she could to Rhode Island. She went from there to Barbadoes and took ship again for Boston ! Here she was taken by the constable and put on ship for Virginia, and after suffering for the faith there, she returned to England, but only for the purpose of carrying out her original plan — to preach in New England ! She now procured from the King a special license to permit her to build a house in America, and with the King's document sailed for Boston. Here she applied for liberty to build a house for herself to live in and for Friends to meet in. The privilege was stoutly refused, and this unwearied woman next started for the Piscataqua region. At Hampton she was imprisoned. At Dover she was put in the stocks and kept four days in prison. Then she made her way back to Cambridge, where she was locked up in " a close, foul dungeon," and kept two days and nights without food or drink. A Friend, for there were by this time convinced Friends in almost all the New England towns, hearing of her sufferings, brought her some milk for which he was fined five pounds. An order was next issued for whipping this poor woman out of the jurisdiction, though she showed the King's document granting her the privilege of owning a house wherever she would in the Colony. She was tied to a post in Cambridge and given ten lashes with a three corded knotted whip. Then she was taken to Watertown, where she received ten lashes more. On a cold, frosty morning she was brought into Dedham, where, tied to a cart, the tortured body had ten lashes more. Torn and bleeding after a long day's journey she was left at night in the woods, and by what seemed to her friends a miraculous preservation she arrived next day at the town of Rehoboth (now the town of Seekonk) and made her way to Newport. cH. V THE KING'S MISSIVE 107 Notwithstanding this usage, to us seemingly unendur- able, Elizabeth Hooton returned to Cambridge, where, after being " abused by a wicked crew of Cambridge scholars," she was whipped again, ifirst in the town of Cambridge, and then from constable to constable through three towns toward Rhode Island. Again she went back to Boston and endeavoured to give her message. She was this time taken to the House of Correction and given ten stripes, and then whipped at a cart's tail through Roxbury, Dedham, and Medfield, and left, at the end of her whipping, in the woods. She got to a town where there were Friends who refreshed her, and, with indomitable per- sistence, she went back to Boston 1 She was again whipped out of the town and threatened with death if she returned. We are told that " her inward consolations did so abound that she was able to bear all her afflictions in holy triumph, and in humble meekness she declared that she was willing, for the love she bore the souls of men, to suffer all and more for the seed's sake." ^ Whether this sort of insistent importunity be judged holy boldness or fanaticism will depend largely, I suppose, upon the point of view — " the psychological climate " — of the person judging. This woman, it is plain, was " possessed " with a conviction of duty, and she believed that the way to break down the odious laws and the system of enforcing conformity was to impress the public with the inhuman character of the system, and to show the magistrates the utter futility of the laws for accom- plishing their purpose, and she put the law and the system to this extreme test. The entire story of what was suffered on the tender bodies of men and women in the effort to break down the system of intolerance and to secure free worship cannot be told here in detail. I have made a complete list of all the sufferers and what they underwent, but it is too bulky to print here. ' Besse, ii. 228-231; New England Judged, pp. 410-418. Elizabeth Hooton had still further sufferings in Boston, Salem, and Braintree, and on one occasion travelled on foot seventy miles to reach Rhode Island. She was in Boston at the time of Governor Endicott's death and attended his funeral, where she probably tried to speak (see Bowden i. 259). She died in the island of Jamaica in 1671. io8 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i The strain was in some instances too great for human nerves to bear, and a few persons — to us, with our know- ledge of hysteria, suggestion, and auto-suggestion, sur- prisingly few — lost their mental balance and did things which belong properly to the list of fanatical acts. In 1663 Thomas Newhouse entered a church, and broke two empty bottles, crying out as he did so that thus those who persecuted Friends should be dashed in pieces. Thomas Newhouse appears to have been mentally un- settled. He became " lost to truth " and was disowned from the Society of Friends.^ In 1 66 1, Catherine Chattam, another victim of harsh persecution, appeared in Boston clothed in sackcloth and ashes as a sign of troubles which the Lord would bring upon that persecuting city. ^ There are two pitiful cases of women who were driven over the verge of sanity by the fury of the persecution which their families endured. The first of these was Lydia Wardel of Hampton. She was " a chaste and tender woman of exemplary modesty," but, harrowed by the treatment which was inflicted on her husband, and still more by the stripping and scourging of women which she had seen, she felt driven to appear unclothed in the congregation at Newbury. She yielded to the obsession and appeared as " a naked sign." The poor woman should have received wise medical treatment. Instead, both she and her husband were outrageously whipped. ^ The other case was that of Deborah Wilson, wife of Robert Wilson of Salem and sister of Joshua Buffum and ' See William Edmundson's Journal, p. 61. Dr. Ellis in his Massachusetts and its Early History, p. 114, has related how two Quaker women, Sarah Gibbons and Dorothy Waugh, entered John Norton's church in Boston in 1658, and broke two bottles " as a sign of his emptiness. " This incident is probably apocryphal. The two women did enter the church and "speak a few words," whereupon they were arrested and kept three days in jail without food. (New England Judged, p. 58. ) None of the early authorities mention the bottles. See interesting note in Hallowell's Pioneer Quakers, p. 73. ^ It must be remembered that both the Puritans and the Friends were diligent readers of the Hebrew prophets, and they, especially the Friends, made much of these "signs," which the prophets often felt called upon to "act" in person. Catherine Chattam was unmercifully whipped for this " acted sign," and passed through a severe illness from the strain, but she appears to have wholly recovered. She afterwards became the wife of John Chamberlein of Boston. ^ New England Judged, pp. 376-377 CH. V THE KING'S MISSIVE 109 Margaret Smith. She, overwrought by the sufferings of her family, had a similar obsession, and felt constrained to walk through the town of Salem as " a naked sign." As a punishment she was tied to a cart by the side of her mother and her sister Margaret Smith, and the three were whipped through the town, while her husband, " himself not altogether of her way, followed after, clapping his hat sometimes between the whip and her back." ^ Margaret Brewster, in 1677, was, as she claimed, "raised up as one from the dead, and came from a sick bed " " to bear a testimony and be as a sign to warn the bloody town of Boston to end its cruel laws." With her hair about her shoulders, ashes on her head, her face coloured black, and sackcloth on her upper garments, she came, attended by two other women, on Sunday morning into the Rev. Mr. Thatcher's meeting-house. " She came and stood in the Old South Church, A wonder and a sig^, With a look the old-time sibyls wore Half-crazed and half-divine." ^ It was a misguided act, no doubt, but no modern reader who studies the case in full can fail to conclude that her persecutors, who insisted that she " took on the shape of the devil," and who whipped her at the cart's tail from the Old South Church through the town of Boston, were at least as " misguided." ^ Sad enough these instances of hysterical tendencies undoubtedly are, but no modern historian would think seriously of citing them as proof that the Quakers were lawless, immodest, or fanatical. That they could stand such inhuman treatment for ten years — a veritable reign of terror — and keep calm and unmoved, and have only these few instances of hysteria and misleading impressions, speaks well for the character of their sanity and restraint. There is, so far as I know, no instance, in the list of sufferings, of any Quaker who " recanted," or who even ' New England Judged, pp. 383-384. '^ Whittier's " In the Old South Church," which deals with this episode. ' For Margaret Brewster's trial see Besse, ii. 261-265. no QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i gave up his practice of the unimportant Quaker " testimonies," such as wearing the hat and saying " thou," in order to win his freedom or to spare himself torture. Not only is the story unsullied by lapses of cowardice, it is further an unbroken record of noble bearing toward the instigators and inflicters of their torment. They did undoubtedly believe that the judgments of Heaven were to fall on their persecutors, and it is possible that they enjoyed the prospect — -they were human ; but in any case they reviled not, they did not murmur, they raised no hand or threat. They forgave and even prayed for their torturers, and literally fulfilled the words of their Master — " Love your enemies." ^ ^ Governor Endicott died in March 1665, and in May of that same year the royal commissioners commanded the General Court of Massachusetts to allow Quakers to attend to their secular business without molestation. In 1675, however, a law was passed prohibiting Quaker meetings in the Colony, and in 1677 constables were ordered to make diligent search for such meetings and to "break open any door where peaceable entrance is denied them." This second brief period of persecution marks the end of the persecution of Quakers as such in New England, Margaret Brewster being the last woman to suffer whipping. CHAPTER VI LATER EXPANSIONS IN NEW ENGLAND In the early 'seventies of the seventeenth century there came in New England a new period of Quaker expansion — the greatest since the first "invasion" in 1657. This expansion was due primarily to the visit of George Fox, the founder of the Society. He sailed from England in the ship Industry the 12th of August 1671, in company with William Edmundson, Thomas Briggs, John Rous, John Stubbs, Solomon Eccles, James Lancaster, John Cartwright, Robert Widders, George Pattison, John Hull, Elizabeth Hooton, ^ and Elizabeth Miars, and he landed in Barbadoes the 3rd of October after a perilous voyage. At the time of his arrival Fox was in broken health, too ill and weak to walk for any distance. During his three months of heavy labour in the island he steadily gained in physical power and in conquering spirit. Convince- ments were made, meetings were settled, and those in authority in the island were impressed with the message and the spiritual ideals of the Friends. Fox wrote at this time his famous Letter to the Governor of Barbadoes, in which he endeavoured to clear the Quakers " from scandalous lies and slanders," and to show that they held the essential doctrines of orthodox Christianity. This Letter has frequently been cited as a Declaration of Quaker faith. It is not that, however, for it deals only slightly ' Elizabeth Hooton wrote in 1670 to Margaret Fox, who was then in prison : " I have a great desire to see thee, if thou could but come to thy husband before he go : so the Lord give thee some liberty that thou may see him. . . I know nothing but I may go with him ; it hath been much on me to go a great while, and to do the best that is required for him. " 112 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i and feebly with the distinctive truth of the Quaker message; it is rather what it claims to be — a document written to clear Friends of slander and heresy on points of catholic, i.e. universal, Christianity.^ From Barbadoes the party of publishers crossed over to Jamaica, where, during seven weeks of strenuous labour, a great convincement of people was made. Here Elizabeth Hooton, who had come to care for Fox on his journey, suddenly, almost without a warning illness, passed away in peace. From Jamaica Fox sailed, in the teeth of a tempestuous storm, to the shore of Mary- land, and after a period of labour there, which will be reviewed in a later chapter, he made his way overland to New England, arriving at Newport the 30th of May 1672. On arrival, he writes, "We had two very good meetings, and many justices, with the governor [Nicholas Easton], the deputy-governor and captaine, and all was satisfyed, and som of them said they did not think there had been such a man in the world." ^ Fox was enter- tained by the governor, Nicholas Easton, who travelled with him extensively during his stay in the Colony. The Yearly Meeting of 1672 was a memorable time. Not only was Fox there, but also John Burnyeat, John Cartwright, George Pattison, John Stubbs, James Lancaster, and Robert Widders — all eminent ministers from abroad — were in attendance. The governor and the deputy- governor sat in the sessions, and the people flocked in from all parts of the island and the country round about, and Friends were " so knit and united " that it required two days for leave-taking when the meetings were over. "And then," Fox says, "being mightily filled with the presence and power of the Lord they went away with joyful hearts to their various habitations in the several ' The Letter is printed in the Journal, ii. 155-158. This visit of Fox and his companions resulted in a very large increase of Quakerism in Barbadoes and in the other West Indies. Some impression of the size of the Society in Barbadoes can be gained from the fact that the Quaker fines between the years 1658 and 1695 amounted to ;^ii,ooo. There were at the high water period of Quakerism in the island five meeting-houses there. See Journal of Friends Historical Society, v. 43. 2 I am quoting from a MS. Journal of Fox's American travels, now in the Bodleian Library (MS. Bodleian Addition A 95, f. 16). CH. VI EXPANSIONS IN NEW ENGLAND 113 colonies where they lived." ^ There are many indications, in Friends' journals and in other contemporary documents, that Ranters abounded in many parts of the Colonies during the seventeenth century. Fox found them in considerable numbers in Rhode Island, and he laboured to make them see that he had no sympathy with their moral and spiritual chaos. " I had a great travell," the MS. Journal says, " on my spirit concerning the ranters, for they had been rude at a iifriends' meeting where I was not at, and I apoynted a meeting amongst them, and I knew that the Lord would give me power over them, and He did I" During his stay in Newport, Fox wrote a letter to the magistrates and officers of the Colony which shows the practical bent of his mind and the breadth of his social and civic interests. He declares that there is a law of God which voices itself in every man and reveals the principle of conduct toward others. He then recommends the Legislature to pass " a law against drunkenness and against them that sell liquors to make people drunk," ^ and " a law against fighting [probably duelling] and swearing." He urges them to " look into all your ancient liberties and privileges — your divine liberty, your national liberty, and all your outward liberties which belong to your commons, your town, and your island Colony." He recommends " that you have a market once a week in your town and a house built for that purpose ; " " that some one be selected in every town and place in all your Colony to receive and record all your births, marriages, and them that die." " Mind that which is for the good of your Colony and the commonwealth of all people — stand for the good of your people which is the good of yourselves." " Stand up for the glory of God, that it may shine over your Colony ; take off all oppression in your Colony, and set up justice over all in your Colony," ' Journal, ii. 169. The Colonies represented would be Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Province of Maine and New York especially Long Island. ^ This is one of the first suggestions ever made in America to prohibit the sale of intoxicants by legal enactment. I 114 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i " and stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made you free, in life, glory, and power." ^ It was at this time that Quakerism was planted on the western shore of the bay, in Narragansett Fox writes : — " We went to Narragansett, about twenty miles from Rhode Island, and the Governor, Nicholas Easton, went with us. We had a meeting at a Justice's house, where Friends had never had any before. ^ It was very large, for the country generally came in ; and people came also from Connecticut and other parts round about, among whom were four Justices of the Peace.^ Most of the people had never heard Friends before ; but they were mightily affected with the meeting, and there is a great desire amongst them after the Truth." * This seed became a great tree, for this western shore of Narragansett Bay proved good soil for the message of the Inward Light, and produced many powerful ministers and intellectual leaders of the Society. Another interesting episode of this period was the theological collision with Roger Williams, the founder of Providence. Fox and the governor with a retinue of Friends went up by water from Newport to Providence, where, according to Fox, " God's blessed seed was exalted and set above all." The account of the Providence visit, as given in the MS. Journal, is very quaint : " I had a lardge meeting and a great travell." " The people here were above the priests in high notions," but they " went away mightyly satisfyed, and said they had never heard the like before." ^ His second meeting was held in " a greate barne which was soe full of people, yt I was extremely soaked with sweat, but all was well." These two meetings and the fame of Fox's preaching powerfully stirred Roger Williams. He was now an old ' This letter is in the archives of the Rhode Island Historical Society, at Providence. It is printed in The Friend (Phila. ), vii. 55 (1833). 2 This was almost certainly Jireh Bull's house. See Hazard's College Tom, p. 9. ' Jireh Bull, Samuel Wilson, and William Heferman were the justices of Narragansett (ibid. p. 9). * Journal, ii. 171. The MS. Journal says that this meeting was the 13th of July. " He mentions that there came to the meeting ' ' a woman who was bad and skoffed, but she went away and was struck sick." CH. VI EXPANSIONS IN NEW ENGLAND 115 man, but the fire of his youthful days rekindled in him when he heard how the Quakers were spreading their doctrines among the people, and how the multitudes were flocking after the apostle of Inward Light.^ He had attended the Yearly Meeting at Newport in 1671, where he endeavoured to have some public discourse with Friends, but he was " stopt," he tells us, " by the sudden praying of the governor's wife," and when he stood up again he was "stopt by John Burnett's [Burnyeat who was in Newport in 167 1 ] sudden falling to prayer and dismissing the assembly."^ He kept away from Fox, when the latter was holding his great meetings in Providence, for " having once tried to get public speech in the Assemblies of Friends," he was resolved " to try another way and to offer a fair and full Dispute." Thereupon he drew up fourteen propositions which he sent to the deputy-governor, John Cranston, for him to deliver to George Fox. The Deputy Governor, however, for some unknown reason, kept them in his possession until the 26th of July, when it was found that George Fox had left Newport. Roger Williams claimed that this delay was made by a collusion with Fox : " in the Junto of the Foxians at Newport it was concluded for Infallible Reasons that his Holiness G. Fox should withdraw." " He knew that I was furnished with artillery out of his own Writings. He saw what consequences would roll down the mountaines upon him. . . . and therefore this old Fox thought it best to run for it and leave the work to his Journeymen and Chaplains to perform in his absence."^ Any one who knows the traits and character of George Fox knows that whatever else happened he did not " run away " " for fear of the consequences which would roll down upon him ! " He himself declares, in the New England Firebrand Quenched — the " Firebrand " being George Fox's name for this " apostle of soul liberty " — ' Williams says (in his George Fox Digged Out of his Burrowes) that he had ' ' long heard of the great name of George Fox " and had ' ' already read his book in folio " ( The Great Mystery of the Great Whore). ''■George Fox Digged Out of his Burrowes, edited by J. Lewis Diman (pub- lications of the Narragansett Club), vol. v. p. 19. ' George Fox Digged Out of his Burrowes. ii6 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i " I neither saw nor ever heard of any propositions from Roger Williams, nor did I go away in fear of him or them." Fox, having spent two months in Rhode Island, had started on his return journey south before Roger Williams' challenge was delivered to him. His friends — "the Foxian Junto," as Roger Williams calls them — went forward to arrange for the great debate. John Stubbs, John Burnyeat, "and six or seven others," went to the home of Williams in Providence to arrange the pre- liminaries. " Their salutations," Roger Williams quaintly says, " were in silence when they came and when they de- parted — drink being offered and accepted by some."' The date fixed upon for the opening of the " debate " was August 9, 1672, and the place chosen was "the Meeting House of the Quakers " in Newport, though to satisfy some who objected to having the " discussion carried away from the home town," it was arranged to have seven pro- positions debated in Newport and seven in Providence. The champion against the Quakers, now more than three- score and ten, rowed by boat thirty miles to meet his opponents. " God graciously helped me," he says, " in rowing all day with my old bones so that I got to Newport toward the midnight before the morning appointed." Meantime, to supply the place left by the departure of Fox, William Edmundson opportunely arrived in Newport, an apostle of Quakerism from Ireland, and one of the foremost of the early Quaker missionaries who came to colonial America. There were now three Quaker debaters against the doughty old man who, however, felt himself quite equal to the battle.^ Governor Nicholas Easton attended the debate, and " maintained the civill peace ! " The fourteen propositions, as drawn up by Roger Williams, were as follows : 1 George Fox Digged Out, p. 35. - This is Roger Williams' characterisation of his opponents : "John Stubbs, learned in the Hebrew and Greek, I found him so " ; " John Burnet [BumyeatJ of a moderate spirit and an able speaker"; and W. Edmundson, ' ' who proved to be the chief speaker, a man not so able nor so moderate as the other two "—"a stout, portly man of a great voice, he would often vapour and preach long, and when I had patiently waited till the gust was over, and began to speak, he would stop my mouth with a very unhansome clout of a grevious interruption," "a pragmatical and insulting soul." See George Fox Digged Out, p. 38. CH. VI EXPANSIONS IN NEW ENGLAND 117 " I. The People called Quakers are not true Quakers accord- ing to the Holy Scriptures. II. The Jesus Christ they profess is not the true Jesus Christ. III. The spirit by which they are acted is not the Spirit of God. IV. They doe not own the Holy Scriptures. V. Their Principles and Professions are full of contradictions and hypocrises. VI. Their Religion is not only an Heresy in matters of wor- ship, but also in the Doctrines of Repentance, Faith, etc. VII. Their Religion is but a confused mixture of Popery, Armineanisme, Socineanisme, Judaisme, etc. VIII. The People called Quakers (in effect) hold no God, no Christ, no Spirit, no Angel, no Devil, no Resurrection, no Judgment , no Heaven, no Hell, but what is in man. IX. All that their Rehgion requires (externall and internal!) to make converts and proseUtes, amounts to no more than what a Reprobate may easily attain unto and perform. X. The Popes of Rome doe not swell with and exercise a greater Pride than the Quaker spirit hath expresst and doth aspire unto, although many truly humble souls may be captivated amongst them, as may be in other religions. XI. The Quakers' Religion is more obstructive and destruc- tive to the conversion and Salvation of the Souls of People than most of the religions this day extant in the world. XII. The sufferings of the Quakers are no true evidence of the Truth of their religion. XIII. Their many Books and writings are extremely Poor, Lame, Naked, and sweld up with high Titles and words of Boasting and Vapour. XIV. The Spirit of their Religion tends mainly (i) to reduce Persons from Civility to Barbarisme. (2) To an arbitrary Govern- ment and the Dictates and Decrees of that sudden spirit that acts them. (3) To a sudden cutting off of People, yea of Kings and Princes opposing them. (4) To as fiery Persecutions for matters of Religion and Conscience as hath been or can be practiced by any Hunters or Persecutors in the world. " ^ The debate naturally attracted great crowds, and was as popular and interesting to the people of that period as a great athletic contest would be now. It seems to have won many new adherents to the Quaker faith — it certainly was felt to be a triumph by those already of the Quaker ' Fox Digged Out of his Burrowes, pp. 4, 5. n8 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES ek. i faith, but, looked at calmly and critically from the point of view of our century, it appears a tilting against windmills on both sides. The two books ^ which record the " spiritual battle " are full of antiquarian interest, but they are a melancholy monument to the bitterness of these seventeenth century theological wars, and there is pitifully little in them — and apparently as little in the debate — which raises into permanent view the grace of saintliness, the beauty of holiness, or the persuasive sweet- ness of the divine Light in men. ^ Two of these " debaters " were instrumental in carry- ing Quakerism into many new fields in New England, and in more firmly establishing it where it was already planted — John Burnyeat and William Edmundson. John Burnyeat, a gentle spirit and a powerful preacher, had ^ George I^ox Digged Out of his Burrowes ["Bosion, i(>j6)^ ajadi A New England Firebrand Quenched, by G. F. and John Burnyeat {London, 1678). ^ William Edmundson's account of the debate gives an interesting though thoroughly prejudiced glimpse of the affair {Journal^ pp. 65-66) : — • * ' After some Days Travel by Narragansett and those Parts, I came to Rhode Island, where I met with John Burnyeat, John Stubbs, and John Cartwright, where one Roger Williams an old Priest and an Enemy of Truth, had put forth Fourteen Propositions (as he called them) which he would maintain against any of the Quakers that came from Old England, and challenged a Dispute of seven of them at Newport in Rhode Island and the other seven at Providence. ' ' 1 join'd with Friends in answering this Challenge, at the Time and Place appointed for the Dispute, which was to be in Friends Meeting-House at Newport ; thither a great Concourse of People of all Sorts gather'd. When those Propositions (as he called them) came to be discoursed of, they were all but Slanders and Accusations against the Quakers ; the bitter old man could make nothing out, hut on the contrary they were turn'd back upon himself ; he was bailed and the People saw his Weakness, Folly and Envy against the Truth and the Friends. " There were many prejudic'd Baptists would fain have help'd the Old Priest against Friends ; but they durst not undertake his Charge against us for they saw it was false and weak. So the Testimony of Truth in the Power of God was set over all his false Charges, to the great Satisfaction of the People. "When this Meeting was ended, which lasted three Days, John Stubbs and I went to Providence, accompanied with many Friends, to hear the other seven Propositions, which lasted one Day. John Burnyeat and John Cartwright going another way in Truth's Service. Now at Providence there was a very great Gathering of People, both Presbyterians, Baptists and Ranters. Roger Williams being there, I stood up and told him in Public, We had spent so many Days at Newport, where he could make nothing out agreeable to his Challenge ; but on the contrary manifested his Clamour, rash and false Accusations, which he could not prove against us, that I was not willing to spend much time in hearing his Clamour and false Accusations, having other service for the Lord, therefore would only spend that Day. So he went on, as he had done at Newport at Rhode Island. We answered to all his Charges against Friends and disprov'd them. " As further illustration of the lack of ' ' grace and sweetness " in this debate I quote Roger Williams' estimate of Edmundson : "A flash of wit, a face of Brass, and a Tongue set on fire from the Hell of Lyes and Fury ! " cH. VI EXPANSIONS IN NEW ENGLAND 119 been brought into the Society of Friends in 1653 through the ministry of George Fox. "This blessed man, George Fox," Burnyeat writes, "directed me unto the light and appearance of Jesus Christ my Saviour in my heart, so that I came to know Him and the glory of the Father through Him. Notwithstanding all my high professions, from my youth, of an imputed righteousness, by which the guilt of my sin would not be charged upon me, but imputed to Christ and His righteousness imputed to me, I now came to see that there was need of a Saviour to save from sin as well as of the blood of a sacrificed Christ to blot out sin. All my pretence and hopes of justification through an invented notional faith were now seen to be but a Babel Tower or an Adam's fig-leaf apron, and as I learned to know Christ's voice and to follow Him, He gave me eternal life and manifested His grace in my heart." ^ He first visited New England in 1666, where he had extended service, visiting all the meetings in the Colonies, as far north as " Piscataway," ^ which included the meetings both in New Hampshire and Maine. He covered the same field of service again in 1671, having once more had " blessed service in Piscataway," and having also attended the Yearly Meeting in Newport that year. He was back a third time in 1672, having travelled on horseback with George Fox all the way from Tredhaven Creek in Maryland. Fox says affection- ately : — " He travelled with me from Maryland through the wilderness, and through many rivers and desperate bogs, where they said never Englishman nor horse had travelled before ; where we lay out at nights, and some- times in Indian houses, and many times were very hard put to it for provisions, but the Lord by His Eternal arm did support us and carry us through all dangers." ^ Before the great debate with Roger Williams, Burnyeat had "debates" with "the Elders of the Church" at Scituate, Mass., where " an abundance of people " met in an orchard, and again in Boston, where " several of note " ' Condensed from Burnyeat's account in his Jmrnal (reprint of ' ' Truth Exalted"), pp. 149-158. ^ Journal, pp. 189, 190. ' Burnyeat's /OKraa/, p. 144. 120 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i came to the meeting, and he "had a blessed season to open things to the people." With two other English Friends, George Pattison and John Cartwright, he went on to " Piscataway," where the Quaker Society was greatly expanded and more solidly established — "all things were settled in sweet unity." On his way back he found an incipient schism in Salem, but "in dread power of the Lord," he powerfully exhorted the meeting to follow the mind of the Spirit and keep in unity. On his return to Rhode Island, Burnyeat broke new ground in Warwick, Rhode Island, " where no Friends had been before," and "several were convinced and did own the truth." Here he " had to do with one Gorton and his company," who, he says, " called them- selves Generalists, for they were of the opinion that all should be saved. But they were in reality Ranters." Burnyeat is here somewhat colouring his judgment with -prejudice, and he does not do Samuel Gorton justice, though some of the Gortonians may have been, as he says, " filthy, unclean spirits." Gorton was a man of real vision, and, with all his peculiarities, was dedicated to the truth. Dr. Ezra Stiles has recorded the following enthusiastic testimony of Gorton's last disciple, John Angell : " The Friends had come out of the world in some ways, but still were in darkness or twilight ; Gorton was far beyond them, he said, on the highway up to the dispensation of light. The Quakers were in no wise to be compared with him ; nor any man else can [be compared with him] since the primitive times of the Church, especially since they came out of Popish darkness. He said Gorton was a holy man ; wept day and night for the sins of blind- ness of the world ; his eyes were a fountain of tears, and always full of tears — a man full of thought and study. He had a long walk cut through the trees or woods by his house, where he constantly walked morning and evening, and even in the depths of the night, alone by himself, for contemplation and the enjoy- ment of the dispensation of light. He was universally beloved by all his neighbours, and the Indians who esteemed him, not only as a friend, but one high in communion with God in heaven." ^ ' Collection Rhode Island Historical Society, ii. 19. CH.VI EXPANSIONS IN NEW ENGLAND 121 In any case a large number of the Gortonians soon after became Friends and " were very loving." ^ Burnyeat next undertook the task, in which many before him and many after him failed, to plant Quakerism in Hartford and other towns of the Connecticut Colony. ° There were no prepared groups here with which to make a beginning, and, though John Winthrop of Connecticut was personally very kindly disposed to Friends, and was intimate with William Coddington, the Colony as a whole was impervious to the Quaker message. William Edmundson arrived in New England on his first missionary visit just in time to lead the great debate with Roger Williams, and he tells us that it proved " a seasonable opportunity to open many things to the people appertaining to the Kingdom of God and Way of Eternal Life and Salvation. The meeting [debate in Providence] concluded in prayer to Almighty God, and the people went away satisfied and loving." ^ He next went on and extended the spiritual conquests in Warwick among Gorton's people, already begun by Burnyeat — " the Lord's power was largely manifested, and the people were very loving, like Friends." He had "refreshing times" in Newport, Narragansett, Scituate, Sandwich, and Boston, and then sailed for Ireland. He came back for a more extended missionary work in 1675, coming from Barbadoes in a yacht, with " a good comfortable passage " of three weeks. It was " the perilous time " of King Philip's War, and " Indians lying hid in bushes shot men down as they travelled."^ Whether connected with the terrible uprising led by King Philip or not, a fierce Indian war broke out in the north- eastern section of New England, and the years 1675 and ^ Burnyeat, p. 211. ' For an account of this undertaking see his Journal, pp. 212-216. ' Edmundson's Journal, p. 67. William Edmundson was born in Westmorland in 1627, and had fought under Cromwell in the Parliamentary army. In 1652 he settled in Ireland for purposes of trade, but on a business trip to England the next year he heard George Fox and James Nayler preach, and was "convinced " and "seized upon by the Lord's power." He became from that time one of the foremost exponents of the new faith in Ireland, and, as we shall see, was one of the leading publishers of Quakerism in Virginia and North Carolina. * Ibid. p. 77. 122 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. j 1676 were crowded with tragic events for this region — the Piscataqua country being one of the centres of hostility. William Edmundson, at the very height of the trouble, struck out for the country "eastward, towards Piscattaway," where " by reason of the war it was danger- ous travelling." " However," he says, " I committed my life to God who gave it, and took my journey " — going by way of Sandwich, Boston, and Salem. After holding meetings on the New Hampshire side of the Piscataqua — which he calls " Piscattaway " — he crossed over by boat into Maine, where he had " large and precious meetings," and " much ground was broken " in the southern end of the Province of Maine. While he was staying in the home of " Nicholas Shapley " [Major Shapleigh] — " a man of v note in that country," a pioneer Quaker of the Piscataqua region — " fourteen lusty Indians, with their heads trimmed and faces painted," came to the house. William Edmundson " discoursed with them " and discovered that they "intended mischief in their hearts, but the Lord calmed them down, and they went away without doing any harm." ^ As he came back through the Massachusetts towns, " travelling with his life in his hands," many were convinced by his preaching, especially in Marblehead and Reading. Most of the people, wherever he came in those parts, were, he tells us, " in Garrisons for fear of the Indians, except Friends." He held an extraordinary meeting in a garrison house in Reading, where, he says, ";«/ heart being full of the Power and Spirit of the Lord, the Love of God ran through me to tfte people ! " His listeners were broken into tears by the demonstration of the Spirit which awakened their consciences, and an old man rising up took the speaker in his arms, and thanked God that the message had found him. The people asked with naivete, what the difference was between their ministers and their visitors. Edmundson's answer, which sounds like Anne Hutchinson's charge, was : " Your ministers are satis- fied with talk about Christ and the Scriptures ; we are not satisfied without the sure, inward experience of God and ' ^ Journal^ p. 79. cH. VI EXPANSIONS IN NEW ENGLAND 123 Christ, and the enjoyment of the comforts which the Scriptures promise and which believers in primitive times enjoyed." After many successful meetings in Massa- chusetts, where people were " tender and loving " as he told his message, he sailed from Boston to Newport, and soon followed up John Burnyeat in another unsuccessful attempt to spread Quakerism in Connecticut.'^ One of the most important events in what I have been calling "the second expansion" of Quakerism in New England, was the planting of it in the island of Nantucket. The first settlers of the island were in close sympathy with Friends and were, at heart, in intimate accord with their message, though they had not become actual members of the Society. The real pioneer of the little island-colony was Thomas Macy, who embarked from Salisbury, Mass., in a small boat in 1659, in company with Edward Starbuck, Isaac Coleman, and probably James Coffin, and sailed round the Cape to Nantucket. Macy had been a man of influence in Salisbury. He was a Baptist of the seeker-type and frequently " exhorted " in public. He came into collision with the authorities for preaching without ordination, and again for entertain- ing Quakers in violation of the law of 1657.^ The reason assigned for his migration was his desire to follow his conscience, and to get free from " the tyranny of the clergy and those in authority." Tristram Coffin, father of the James mentioned above, soon joined the settlers on the island, and became their first chief magistrate. The settlement was composed of persons of liberal spirit and it grew rapidly. In 1673 Richard Gardiner and his wife, being persecuted in Salem "for attending Quaker meeting," moved to Nantucket Stephen Hussey, son of Christopher, who was one of the original purchasers of the island, became a " convinced Quaker " during a sojourn in Barbadoes, and John Swain appears also to have been a Quaker before there was a meeting on the island.^ But ' ?es Journal, pp. 83-92. ^ Pike's Tkt New Puritan (1879) pp. 35 and 54 seq. See also Coffin's History of Newbury. Whittier has told Macy's story in his poem ' ' The Exiles." ' See Thomas Story's /iJKrwa/ (1747), p. 353. 124 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i the real creation of the Quaker Society in Nantucket was due to the ministry of three noted men — Thomas Chalkley, John Richardson, and Thomas Story — between the years 1698 and 1704. Thomas Chalkley,^ then a young man and on his first visit to America, came by sloop to the " Isle of Nantucket " in 1698. He spent "several days" on the island, where " people did generally acknowledge the truth and were tender-hearted." Two hundred came to hear him, though " it was never known before that so many were together on the island." He made a deep impression on his hearers, and had the satisfaction of seeing Nathaniel Starbuck, an important citizen, " convinced." ^ John Richardson, a native of Yorkshire and a man of very interesting character, soon followed after, and carried the spiritual work, begun by Thomas Chalkley, much farther on. He came by sloop with Peleg Slocum from Newport, and the Nantucket settlers crowded to the shore, " possessed with great fear " that the sloop was French, loaded with arms and men, come to take their island, for war was raging between England and France. They were greatly relieved to hear that their visitors " came in the love of God to hold meetings among them." The visitors went directly, by a kind of homing instinct, to the house of Nathaniel Starbuck, who was " in some degree convinced of the truth." Here they found " Mother Mary Starbuck whom the islanders esteemed as a judge among them, and little of moment was done without her." The " prophet " in Richardson came immediately into play, and he saw that here was the pillar for the building of a new Church. "At the sight of her," he writes, " it sprang into my heart, To this woman is the everlasting love of God." It was soon arranged that the proposed meetings should be in her house.^ ' Thomas Chalkley was born in Southwark, London, in 1675. He moved to Philadelphia in 1701, and from that time to the end of his life in 1741 he was closely identified with Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. He was a great traveller, a powerful minister, and his Journal is important for this period of American history. * Thomas CaaSi\&}' s, Journal (1751), pp. 19, 20. ' She was the wife of Nathaniel Starbuck, sen., her maiden name being Mary Coffin. cH. VI EXPANSIONS IN NEW ENGLAND 125 The first meeting was held in a "large and bright rubbed room, with suitable seats or chairs, the glass windows being taken out of their frames and many chairs placed without very conveniently." Before the meeting began, John Richardson had been walking up and down in the woods " under a very great load in spirit." When it gathered, "the mighty power of the Lord began to work," and as John Richardson records, "the Lord's heavenly power raised me and set me on my feet as if one had lifted me up " ; whereupon he proceeded to " open and deliver things." " For most of an hour," he continues, " the great woman [Mary Starbuck] fought and strove against the message, sometimes looking up into my face with a pale and then a more ruddy complexion ; but the strength of the truth increased, and the Lord's mighty power began to shake the people . . . and when she could no longer contain she submitted to the power of truth and lifted up her voice and wept." Not only was " the great woman " won, but " the inhabitants of the island were shaken and most of the people convinced of the truth." And when the meeting came to a close,, "they sat weeping universally," and could not disperse. " After some time Mary Starbuck stood up, held out her hand, spoke tremblingly, and said, ' All that ever we have been building, and all that ever we have done, is pulled down this day ; and this that we have heard is the everlasting truth.' " " She, and as many as could be seen,, were wet with tears, and the floor was as though there had been a shower of rain upon it." ^ Nobody can read John Richardson's account of his visit on Nantucket without feeling that there was a power attending his speaking of a very novel and unusual sort, and his presence and his words seem to have had an extraordinary transforming effect upon the people. He, however, did not take any steps toward the organization of a " society " out of those who were " convinced." That step was taken by Thomas Story in the summer of 1704. Story was one of the most remarkable publishers of ^ An Account of the Life of John Richardson (1783), pp. 84-94. 126 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i Quakerism in the first half of the eighteenth century, a powerful debater, always ready to accept the challenge of any Quaker opponent, a moving minister when the Spirit opened a message within him, and a too voluminous writer, whose style at rare intervals is clear, vivid, and marked with beauty. He visited again and again all the settlements of Friends in the American Colonies, and he took a large part in the eighteenth century expansion of Quakerism. On his extended travels through New England he found his way to Nantucket. He at once saw, as John Richardson had done, the peculiar gifts and graces of Mary Starbuck, and he realised the power for service which lay in her. She was, he says, "A wise, discreet woman, well read in the Scriptures, in great reputation throughout the. island for her knowledge in matters of religion, and an oracle among them on that account, insomuch that they would not do anything without her advice and consent." ^ After holding a number of meetings on the island Thomas Story had a powerful " concern of mind," which took away his sleep, that a permanent meeting ought to be established in Nantucket, and his thoughts turned to Mary Starbuck as " the chief instrument " for maintaining it She received the suggestion with " great gravity, and it became her concern," and the meeting was accordingly started in the home of Mary Starbuck, where the neigh- bours of the island met, week by week, " to wait on the Lord." ^ The meeting thus begun had a steady growth, and by the opening of the nineteenth century Nantucket was one of the great centres of Quakerism in America, Edmund Peckover, of England, visited Nantucket on his travels through New England in 1743. He found on the island " a brave, weighty, solid people, living pretty much in love and unity together." He reports three hundred families there, and estimates that two hundred and fifty of them are frequenters of the Quaker meeting. He says that the meeting-house holds fifteen hundred ' Journal, p. 350. " Nantucket Monthly Meeting was established the 26th of May 1708. CH. VI EXPANSIONS IN NEW ENGLAND 127 persons, " and it was very full when we were there." " They have seven or eight Public Friends." ^ Samuel Fothergill, who was on Nantucket in 1755, says that more than fifteen hundred attended the meeting which he held there — most of them professors of truth. He adds that "the richest part of the inhabitants [of the island] embraced the principles of truth from conviction ; the others thought the expense of maintaining a priest would be too heavy for them and have turned Quaker to save money ! " ^ It is not possible, within the space at command, to speak of the other contributors, of whom there were many,' to the spread of Quakerism in the New England Colonies in the eighteenth century. Something, however, must be said, though briefly, of the extraordinary work and influence of the Fothergills — father and son — and of two or three other " publishers " of special historical importance. The two Fothergills, John and Samuel, were highly endowed, broad in their intellectual outlook, refined and gentle in breeding, possessed of the best culture of their time, and withal delicately responsive to celestial currents, so that through them the New England Friends and their neighbours became partakers of the maturest fruits of the spiritual life of that period. John Fothergill came from his English home three times — in 1706, 1722, and 1737 — traversing each time the entire circle of Quaker communities from Newport to the Piscataqua region. In 1722 he reports two thousand persons at the Newport Yearly Meeting at which there was " a demonstration of the Eternal power of God and a confirmation of many souls." * His final visit occurred when " the Great Awakening " in New England was in its ^ Journal of Edmund Peckover, printed in Journal of Friends' Historical Society (London), i. 95-109. He says that the inhabitants of Nantucljet cleared 20,000 pounds sterling from their catch of " Sperma Ceeti whales" during their last fishing season (p. 106). ^ Fothergill's Memoirs, p. 107. H. B. Worth, in his Quakerism on Nantucket (1896), estimates that in 1794 half the population of the island, then amounting to 5600 inhabitants, attended the Friends' meeting. ' No less than 576 "public Friends" visited Nantucket meeting for the pur- pose of ministering, between the years 1701 and 1780. * Life and Travels of John Fothergill (1753), p. 151. 128 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. , first stages. His son Samuel came after the " Awakening " had run its full course, and he was admirably, almost perfectly, fitted by nature and grace to "speak to the condition" of the serious, seeking souls who had been first highly wrought up by the revival, and then left somewhat stranded by the back ebb which succeeded the high tide of religious emotion. One of the primary ideas which the Leaders of " the Great Awakening," especially Jonathan Edwards, had insisted on was the fact of the immediate contact of the Holy Spirit with the human soul, and the necessity of a change wrought thus directly upon the soul by this influence. The soul must be touched by the Holy Spirit, Edwards had urged, or it cannot be saved. The energising will of God must act upon it and move it to a passionate desire for salvation. Under the powerful preaching of Edwards and Whitefield there were many evidences of immediate divine influence, but involved with the move- ment there was such intense emotion, such high-wrought enthusiasm, such vivid appeals to the imagination, that many distressing phenomena, of the sort usually occurring at times of high nervous tension, broke out, and, as intimated above, when the long revival period had run its course, there came a serious spiritual ebb and a positive reaction.^ It was at this critical moment that the distinguished English minister, Samuel Fothergill, arrived in Newport, where fifteen years before George Whitefield had begun his wonderful tour of the New England towns. Fother- 1 While the work of Whitefield was at its height, the Friends of Rhode Island received a most peculiar challenge to try their religion with Moses Bartlett, who styled himself ' ' a real Christian. " His letter was as follows : "To the Quaker Ministers in this town and Colony ; There is a wonderful Reformation in Connecticut Colony among the Presbyterians, where the everlasting gospel is preached ; but I have heard some of you blaspheme against it abominably ; but I desire you to Dispute me in order to vindicate your Orders, which you call Friends Orders, for they are antiscriptural, and so consequently of the Devil ; You shall have the liberty to pick out as many able men as you please, if it be as many as there was Prophets of Baal ; only I will have the same measure of time as you ; and we will have it all written. It may be you will ask what People I am of? To which I answer, you may call me a Presbyterian if you please, but I call myself a real Christian." Printed in Arnold's History of Rhode Island, ii. 138. cH. VI EXPANSIONS IN NEW ENGLAND 129 gill's coming — the result of ten years of deep travail of spirit — was a happy event for the religious life of New England. He, too, believed with all his profound being, that the Holy Spirit of God was in immediate relation with the lives of men. He believed, no less definitely than Edwards did, that the important changes in human lives are due to the work of God within, but he insisted that the energising will of God worked in all men and not alone in an elected few, and that the choice which brings salvation is a human choice. With him this great truth that the soul has immediate contact with God had passed from the stage of intense enthusiasm, which always goes with its discovery, to a stage of calm and dignified power due to the penetration of his personality with this inward light and grace. He was a glowing exhibition, as he stood before the great throngs that came to hear him, and as he moved quietly among men in his daily walk, of a type of life which demonstrates beyond ail arguments the incoming of the divine into the human. The divine favour which attended his ministry in Rhode Island "brought the deepest reverence upon my soul," he writes, " and tears of joy and comfort " from the people, and " the Great Name spread itself afresh." ^ He visited all the Quaker centres, and broke new ground in the Province of Maine, going as far as Casco Bay. He writes of this eastern visit, " Truth has opened my way in several places where no Friends lived, and my heart has been bowed with reverence to observe and feel the openness and visitation of love and life. The people flock into meetings in crowds and behave with great solidity." The effect of his preaching and the impression he made is well shown in his modest account of his great public meeting in Boston, held almost exactly a hundred years from the time of the arrival of those first unwelcome Quakers : ^ He says that the number of people at New England Yearly Meeting at the time of his visit was very great, it being in attendance the largest Yearly Meeting in the world. Memoirs, p. i88. Edmund Peckover says that the attendance in 1743 was not less than 5000. "I never was at so large a meeting before — a most solemn, weighty, awful time. People from 150 miles to the eastward came *oit-" — Journal Friends Historical Society, i. 102. K I30 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i " 2nd of %th Month. — I dropped my pen yesterday under a weighty concern to appoint an evening meeting in this place, and upon its being mentioned to the magistrates, they cheerfully offered either one of their own places of worship, or the Town- hall, saying that our own house was too small to accommodate the people who inclined to come in. I found more freedom to accept their offer of the hall, and had a very large meeting in the evening, at which were present about two thousand people, and amongst them nearly all the magistracy of the place, several of their ministers and principal people : it was a time, I believe, never to be forgotten ; the power and the wisdom of Truth was a canopy over the meeting, and I believe the Truth itself gained great ground ; let every part of the gain, glory, and profit be ascribed to that excellent Name in and from which all wisdom and strength proceed. One of their ancient professors said pretty loud, at the close of the meeting, 'I thank God that I have once heard the Gospel of life and peace preached in its purity as it hath been this day.' " Samuel Fothergill's visit to the meetings of the Friends in the Province of Maine marks an epoch in the develop- ment of Quakerism in that section of the country. There had been a few scattered Friends in the Province since the visit of Alice Ambrose and Mary Tomkins to Kittery in 1662, vj^hen a meeting was formed in the Eliot section of this township. The town records of Scarboro, Maine, state that Stephen Collins and Sarah Mills were fined in 1665 for refusing to support the minister of the town, and in 1671 Moses Collins and Sarah Mills were whipped for being Quakers^ — the only instance of whipping a Quaker in the Province of Maine. A meeting was begun in Falmouth, now Portland, the Casco Bay of Fothergill's account, about 1 740. The Rev. Mr. Smith, Congregational minister in the church at Falmouth, records in his diary, 30th July 1740, this memorable fact : " The Church kept a day of fasting and prayer on account of the spread of Quakerism " ; and 22nd July 1745, he records that there are "many strange \i.e. foreign] Quakers in town." ^ This group of Friends at Falmouth was visited in 1743 by the English minister, ' Collection of Maine Historical Society , iii. 71 and 154. ^ Ibid, , vii. 221. CH. VI- EXPANSIONS IN NEW ENGLAND 131 Edmund Peckover and his companions. " We went," he writes, "about seventy miles farther [from Dover, New Hampshire] by the seaside to a place called Gascoe Bay [should be Casco Bay] where a few Friends are settled. They have got a meeting both First days and Week-days. I believe there are not fewer than thirty who come pretty constantly to meetings and, I think, have three or four who appear in public testimony." ^ A third meeting within the Province of Maine owed its origin to a remarkable visit of the Pennsylvania Quaker, John Churchman. He made a tour of New England in 1742, and went as far east as Kittery, where he found a " tender people," probably the group composing the Eliot meeting. As he lay in bed at a Friend's house he felt a "call" to a new field. In his own quaint language he tells the story : "On third day morning, as I lay in bed, I felt my mind drawn towards the north-west, which was an exercise to me ; for I had before thought myself at liberty to return towards Boston. I arose about sun-rise, and asked the friend where I lodged whether any Friends lived at a distance on that quarter, for that I had a draft that way ? He answered. No, and asked how far I thought to go. I told him it did not seem to me to be more than ten miles. He said there was a people about eight miles distant, which he supposed was the place to which I felt the draft. I desired him to send a lad with a few lines to some person that he knew, to inform them that a stranger would be glad to have a meeting among them at the eleventh hour of that day, if they were free to grant it ; which he did, and with his wife went with me : so that we got to the place near the time proposed, and found a considerable gathering of people, that I wondered how it could be in so short a time, not more than three hours' warning. They were preparing seats, by laying boards on blocks in a pretty large new house, and soon sat down in an orderly manner. I went in great fear and inward weak- ness ; and at the sight of such a gathering of people, and none of our profession among them, except the friend and his wife who accompanied me, and two others who joined us in the way, my spirit was greatly bowed, and my heart filled with secret cries to the Lord, that He would be pleased to magnify His own power ; ' Journal Friends Historical Society, i. 103. 132 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i and, blessed for ever be His holy name ! He heard my cry, and furnished me with wisdom and strength to declare His word to the people, among whom there were some very tender seekers after the true knowledge of God; and the doctrine of truth flowed freely towards them, the universality of the love of God being set forth, in opposition to the common predestinarian notion of election and reprobation. When the meeting was over I felt an uncommon freedom to leave them, for they began to show their satisfaction with the opportunity in many words. So speaking to the friend that went with me, we withdrew and went to our horses ; and I immediately mounting, beheld the man of the house where the meeting was held running to me, who, taking hold of the bridle, told me I must not go away without dining with them. I looked steadfast on him, and told him that I did believe this was a visitation for their good, but I was fearful that they, by talking too freely and too much, would be in danger of losing the benefit thereof, and miss of the good that the Lord intended for them ; and my going away was in order to example them to go home to their own houses, and turn inward, and retire to that of God in their own hearts, which was the only way to grow in religion. So I left him and returned with my friend Joseph Eastes and his wife." ^ This was apparently the beginning of Quakerism in the township of Berwick. The fourth group was formed in the town of North Yarmouth (now Harpswell) in 175 1, and from this settlement it spread out into new regions north and west. In Historical Collections of Maine is preserved this interesting petition to Governor Shirley in 1756, from the citizens of Merryconege Neck, in the Province of Maine : ^ "The Inhabitants of the Neck, Being desirous of the good Welfare and Increase of this Place, most humbly beg, etc. The Parish is But a New Settlement and there are many Opinionists [a footnote explains that they are Quakers] settled among us which is a Great Damage to ye Parish ; and we have been at very Great charges of late respecting some Public Affairs, and those Opinionists will not in the least Strive for the Promotion of Sd Parish or in ye least Pay Precinct Charges." ^ ^ Gospel Labours of John Churchman, p. 73. ^ The upper part of Merryconege Neck adjoined the township of Brunswick, and the lower part joined North Yarmouth. " Collection of Maine Historical Society, xiii. 42. CH. VI EXPANSIONS IN NEW ENGLAND 133 These new groups were visited in 1757 by William Reckitt, an English travelling friend. He says : " We went to Barwick and had several meetings there ; travelled through the woods to Casco, where we had an opportunity with Friends and such as attend their meetings. We crossed the Bay to Small Point, and in our return had a meeting upon a Neck of land called Meryconeague." ^ About 177 1 most of the Friends who formed the little society in Harpswell moved to the Plantation of Royaltown, which afterwards became the township of Durham, and a Quaker centre of great future promise sprang up here. Another group was formed during the 'sixties of that century in the town of Windham. The great expansion of Quakerism in Maine was, however, due to the work of David Sands, a minister from the Colony of New York. He was, like most of the missionaries who have figured in this history, a man of rare sensitiveness to inward impressions, loyally obedient to intimations of duty, quick to feel what ought to be done with a given situation, and withal possessed of much of that indefinable influence which we call spiritual power. To him more than to any other one individual we must attribute the spread of Quakerism through the great county of Kennebec, in the south-central part of Maine, where it has since flourished. He spent two years and six months on his first tour, starting in the spring of 1777. Much of the time he was travelling in wilderness country, carrying his axe to clear his way as he went, going frequently on foot and "endur- ing great hardships."^ Like most of these itinerant ministers who were the real creators of New England Quakerism, he went first to the well-organised centres, such as Newport and Nantucket, where he visited not only meetings but every family of Friends. Then he pushed on to the newer, less organised centres at Falmouth and Windham, and finally he struck out on foot into wilderness regions, making for the scattered ' Reckitt's Life and Labours (London, 1776), p. 113. ^ See /oa?-«a/ of David Sands (1848), p. 11. 134 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i settlements which were being formed in the beautiful and fertile Province of Maine. " We had many meetings," he says, "while passing through a wilderness country and found many seeking minds." " I have spent part of the fall and most of the winter," he writes his wife in 1779, " amongst a people not of our profession, many of whom received me very kindly and also my message, which made them feel near to me, and their hearts and houses are open to receive Friends. I have an untrodden path to tread where no Friends before have travelled in the work of ministry. I have passed through many towns where there are no religious meetings of any sort. The Lord has led me through the wilder- ness land ; He has preserved me through the cold ; in sickness and health and through every trial, of which I have had many. In that love which time or distance cannot change I salute thee." ' As a result of these patient labours of David Sands and his powerful ministry, often strikingly appropriate to the situation, there was formed a chain of new meetings in the belt of the country fringing the Kennebec River, and the close of the Revolutionary War, that is to say the close of the Colonial Era, thus marks the high-water . point of Quaker expansion in New England. These visiting, itinerant ministers or missionaries have been spoken of as "the real creators of New England Quakerism." So, in a sense, they were. But the statement is only partially true. The true source of its strength and power lay, from the very beginning, in the character of the native material out of which the meetings ^ Journal, p. 25. The following letter from Joseph Wing, a companion to David Sands on a later visit, gives a good idea of their difficulties : " Sometimes traveld from 12 to 17 miles between houses and had the advantage of a foot partb with marked trees to Gide us. Sometimes got but two meals a Day and them were Corse tu ; There were Walks Not very pleasant to the Natural part, but so it is, and it is Not best that we should have Smooth things all the time : we had once to lay in the bottom of a Small bote and coverd us with our Sales, once laid on the beach by the side of a Fier and had our Saddle bags to lay our heads on and our Great Coats and Misketers to Cover us, and once Expected to have laid in the woods without the advantage of Fier or victuals and had Come to a Conclusion in what manner it should take place, but Jest before Daylight left us we saw a lite which proved to be a hous to our great joy and Satisfaction — So the Great Master is pleased at times to try us with the Site of Danger and then from time to time doth preserve us from it : in this Dessolate Wilderness there was many kinds of Wild Varmants which had been known to pray upon people." — Bulletin of Friends Historital Society, Philadelphia, vol i. No. 3, p. ii3. CH. VI EXPANSIONS IN NEW ENGLAND 135 were builded. Those who were attracted by the message of the itinerant preachers were already prepared in advance for a spiritual type of religion. They were, as so many of these Journals intimate, already dissatisfied with form and ceremony, out of sympathy with the legal aspect of religion and " seekers " after a life inwardly fed and vitalised. Mary Starbuck, " the great woman," who seemed to John Richardson and Thomas Story divinely prepared to be the " pillar " of a Quaker Meeting in Nantucket, was no solitary example. Wherever Quakerism took root and grew there were persons of this prepared type already there, and they formed the nucleus of the local " Society." David Sands found in the Maine woods at Vassalborough a man named Remington Hobby, who was a person of strong native traits and capacities, solid in judgment, inclined to a religion of inward reality, and waiting for a spark to kindle him to the fusing-point. He, under the personal influence and message of David Sands, became the " live centre " of the new Society in that region. Something like that occurred in each locality where the message became an organising force. But the one dynamic person, important enough to be named as the " live centre," was only one among many of like traits and character. The reason that these " little societies " in the new world were novel and extraordinary was that they were composed of remarkable persons, prepared by years of experience for a type of religion which called in an unusual degree for individual responsibility and personal initiative, and which dispensed with adventitious helps and brought each member into the apostolic succession. There were no doubt many who were commonplace in endowments and power, and whose religion was in the main perfunctory, but there was at the centre of all the meetings which I have closely studied a group of persons who had a live religion, and who knew how to share their spiritual gains with the group to which they belonged. They, as much as their distinguished visitors, were the creators of New England Quakerism. :hapter VII A,^ A NEW TYPE OF SOCIAL RELIGION I TfflE Quakers were, as the preceding chapters have shown, a mystical people, holding as a primary article of their faith that the Divine Spirit, or Eternal Christ, is an actual Presence in the human soul, at first appearing as a judging or condemning Principle, and later, through the conformity and obedience of the individual, as an illuminating, inspiring, and guiding inward Spirit. This mystical principle sounded to the ears of their opponents like a dangerous leaven of wild disorder, a seed of Ranterism which, when grown, would topple down the pillars of Church and State. It seemed to mean that individual caprice and subjective whim were to be crowned and mitred, and that moral chaos was to come again. Something very different, however, actually happened — something quite worth study. The most interesting contribution of the Quakers is their success in constructing and maintaining a type of social religion in which the claim of a divine Light, lighting the individual soul from within, was united with a thoroughly ordered and practical group-life quite unique in the history of Christianity. From the very first the central feature of their religion in the New England Colonies was "the meeting" — the meeting for worship. This was a peculiarly august gathering. The people composing it were plain ordinary men and women, who yoked their own oxen, ploughed their own fields, wove their own cloth, and washed their own dishes. Many of them drove in their wagons several miles to attend it, and through the early period they 136 cH. VII NEW TYPE OF SOCIAL RELIGION 13; risked arrest and heavy fines in many parts of the Colony whenever they gathered with their neighbours for this purpose. In the early stage of the movement the meetings of every sort were held in dwelling-houses, and we have here an interesting repetition of the custom which prevailed in the early apostolic Church. Recent scholars have shown that wherever Christians went they had " house churches," for which purpose some well-to-do member furnished his house.^ So, too, did the early New England Friends, and the gatherings were invariably held in the large living room of some prosperous colonist, for instance in the home of William Coddington in Newport, of John Nowland in Sandwich, of Edward Wanton in Scituate, and of John Chamberlein in Boston.^ But, however plain and marked with toil these Friends might be, and however imminent the danger of persecution might be, in " the meeting " on First day morning they felt themselves in heavenly places. They were moved and animated, quickened and possessed with a common faith that God was with them in their meeting, and that they were admitted behind the veil into the holy of holies. The silence was intense, for it was living and dynamic, and they believed that there in the hush, in their humble group, the great God of the Universe was preparing a mouthpiece for His word, and that when the seal of silence was broken and utterance should come, it would be the prophetic word of the Lord. There were tears of joy and rapture on many faces as they sat in stillness, and a tremulous movement often swept over the company, making the name of " Quaker " not altogether in- appropriate.^ ^ Friends appear sometimes to have called their ' ' meetings " Churches. The following minute is from the Records of Rhode Island Monthly Meeting for 6th July 1688 : "This Meeting thought fit to write to ye Chirch of Friends in Plymouth, to remind them to bring in their sufferings to ye next Yearly Meeting." * The Yearly Meeting was held in William Coddington's house until his death, and Quarterly Meeting was held for years in Edward Wanton's house. Meeting- houses were built in Newport and in Sandwich as early as 1672 and 1673, but they were small structures, and larger meetings were still for some years held in private houses. ' I am drawing for my account on the early Journals of Friends. 138 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i The speaking, when it came, was somewhat rhythmical and rapturous, loaded with emotion. It was closely interwoven with a tissue of Scripture texts and phrases, bearing mainly on the central idea that God had now come to visit His people, to give them the Day Star experience in their hearts, and to be a present Guest in their midst. Suddenly the voice would drop, the cadence disappear, and the speaker would give, in genuine simplicity, some personal experience which had been granted to him. There might be many such "exercises" from the group, all bearing a common tinge and as though forged in a common experience. If a minister " from abroad " were present, as often was the case in these early days, the " word " would be more likely to come as a discourse of interpretation, instruction, and edification from him, and the listeners, believing implicitly that the visitor was sent, would be deeply attentive to what he opened to them and powerfully impressed by it. As some one knelt to pray all hats were removed, for they were generally worn at other times ; all stood, and the person on his knees, with trembling frame and tremulous voice, uttered what seemed to him the common need of the meeting as in the stillness it had surged up into his responsive soul. " The meeting" was thus not a place for venting individual whim and personal caprice. It was the time when many individuals were merged and baptized into a living group, with a common consciousness of a divine Presence, and the utterances which were given were expected to be " in the common life," and it was an occasion of profound feeling, of lofty joy, and of real refreshing. Each locality produced its little school of " prophets," doubtless often of crude and commonplace intelligence, but with some evidence of anointing and able to utter the "word" for the group. It was a bold experiment to dispense utterly and completely with the ordained priest, the professional minister, and to assume that all men were potentially near enough to God to be their own priests, but these Friends actually triec^ it. It gave those who CH. VII NEW TYPE OF SOCIAL RELIGION 139 formed the group an extraordinary sense of spiritual dignity and a no less important consciousness of responsi- bility. A person was no longer an atom, a mere individual, to be " lost " or " saved " by a system ; he was bound in, vitally and organically, into the life above and the life below — a branch of God's true Vine and a member of a spiritual society of persons, each co-operating for the good of all, and each a possible channel of grace for the rest. The most important feature of " the meeting " was the powerful sense of reality which pervaded it — the peculiar conviction which possessed the members of the group that they had found God. They were no longer hearing about Him and about His covenants and dispensations in past ages ; their own hearts were burning as they partook of the bread which He broke for them and as they drank at what seemed to them the wells of eternal life. It was this assurance of reality, this exalting experience, which more than anything else propagated primitive Quakerism. The arguments " about " the Inward Light were much on a level with arguments " about " covenants — both moved in the realm of " conceptions," but the man who had felt his soul fed in such a meeting was "convinced," with a permanent conviction. Another influence which powerfully tended to foster common ideals, and to unify the group in spirit and aim, was the unbroken stream of itinerant ministry from the mother Society and from the Societies in the other Colonies. The minutes of the meetings show an amazing list of these visitors. When one remembers the difficulties of travel, the expense in time and money, the primitive sort of entertainment which was possible at this period, the element of sacrifice looms very large in this story of travel which must for ever remain unwritten. But the point of importance at the present moment is the formative influence of these unique travellers. They believed, and their listeners believed, that they were " divinely sent messengers." They came into the homes of the native Friends and supplied them with the facts, the news, the I40 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i personal drama, of the wider Society of which they formed a fragment. By word of mouth those of all sections heard of the progress of events, the issues before the Society, the spread of " Truth " as they called it,^ and they learned to know, in their isolated spot, the main problems of the whole movement, which they thus in some measure shared. These travellers visited every region, however remote, and they were thus the bearers of ideas and ideals which formed a common stock of thought and aspiration, and without knowing it the native ministers shaped their message and formed their manner of delivering it under the unconscious suggestions supplied by their visitors, so that the Quaker in Dover and the Quaker in Sandwich were almost as alike in inward tissue as they were out- wardly in cut of coat ! But the greatest socialising influence, and next to the meeting for worship the most creative feature of the Quaker organisation, was " the meeting for business." In the earliest stage " the business meetings " were not clearly differentiated, as they later came to be, into Monthly, Quarterly, and Yearly Meetings. At first, and for some years, all meetings under these various names were primarily enlarged meetings for worship and ministry — a sort of " general meeting " drawing attenders from a wider territory than the local " First day Meeting." The " business " was at first rather meagre, and consisted mainly of accounts of sufferings endured and reports of what was being done to spread the " Truth." ^ The novel feature of all these meetings, from lowest to highest, was the group-spirit which prevailed in them. Each individual Quaker believed in divine illumination and spiritual guidance — the Light of Christ within him was the beginning and end of his faith. But it was plain to them all that individuals sometimes erred and missed the ^ Even the horse which carried the ministers from place to place was called "Truth's horse." 2 I find a minute of Duxbury Monthly Meeting as late as 1698 to this effect : "We have agreed that the Monthly Meeting which is held at the house of Robert Barker in Duxbury shall be a meeting for business as it is elsewhere among Friends." Evidently before this it had been a general meeting for worship and cxtemion. This was later called Pembroke Monthly Meeting. cH. VII NEW TYPE OF SOCIAL RELIGION 141 Guide, or, as an ancient minute says, " ran out of their measure and brougiit death instead of life ! " It would not do — all the sound Quaker leaders knew this — to call men to follow their inward Light, and then to treat them as atoms and leave them to go their individual way according to the suggestion of inward impulse, which might be from above and might also be from below. They went to work with fine insight and with wise instinct to mass their guidance and to make their spiritual wisdom a corporate affair. Every religious meet- ing they held was supposed to be held in the Light of Christ, and the exercises of it were supposed to move in response to the will of the Spirit, and each member found his own particular part and place by being organic with the whole. So, too, with the " business " of monthly, quarterly, and yearly meetings. Each decision was reached by taking the " sense " or " judgment " of the whole meeting, and each such conclusion was supposed to be under divine guidance, and was arrived at only in the unity of the body. From first to last the group was the unit, and the individual found his life and his leading in the Life and Light of the formative spiritual group. Loosely organised local meetings for business were held as early as 1658 in Sandwich and Newport, a little later in Scituate, Duxbury,^ Salem, and Lynn, with others following soon after, but no meeting records survive for a date earlier than 1673.^ The Quarterly ' There is on record an order of the court held in Duxbury in 1660 : ' ' Whereas there is a constant monthly meeting of Quakers from divers places in great number, which is very offensive and may prove very prejudicial to the government, and as the most constant place for such meetings is Duxburrow, they have ordered Constant Southworth and William Paybody to repair to such meetings, together with the marshall or constable of the town, and use their best endeavours by discourse and argument to convince or hinder them. ' ' — Records of Plymouth Colony, vol. xi. p. 130. ^ The Records of American meetings were undoubtedly begun at the suggestion of George Fox. This is the first entry in the Sandwich Book of Records : " At a man's Meeting kept at Will. Allen's house ye 25th day of ye 4th mo. [June, by our modern calendar] 1673. At wch. Meeting it is concluded yt. for ye future a man's Meeting be kept ye first sixth day of ye week in every month, and for Friends to come together about ye eleventh hour." The Rhode Island Records begin in 1676. The following Monthly Meetings were established in New England in the Colonial period : 142 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i Meeting, as its name implies, was held four times in the year, and in the earliest period it was a distinctly religious meeting.^ It massed together in a definite community the Quaker forces spread over a large area of country, and it was held mainly for the purpose of propagating the Quaker message — " the Truth," as they insisted. There was often a distinguished visitor or visitors present, and those who came were likely to hear the Friends' interpre- tation of Christianity powerfully presented. It was also the custom to read on these occasions epistles containing a message of Truth from other meetings, or from some prominent Friend who had formerly visited them and had " a concern for their advancement in the Truth." It was, too, quite the custom to hold special meetings for "youth," at which epistles, or passages from Friends' writings were read and advice " in the way of life " given.^ These Quarterly Meetings gradually developed into meetings for the transaction of business, and matters concerning the wider life of the Church, too weighty to be settled in a local monthly meeting, came up here for consideration. The building of meeting-houses and the raising of money for extensive relief would come before Sandwich in 1658 : Records begin 1673. Rhode Island in 1658 : Records begin 1676. Pembroke before 1660 ; Records from 1676. Salem, date of origin unknown : Records begin 1677. Dartmouth, 1699. East Greenwich, 1699. Hampton (later Amcsbury), 1701. Dover, 1701. Nantucket, 1708. Providence and SmithReld, 1718. Swanzea, 1732. South Kingstown, 1743. Yarmouth, Maine, 1761. Westport, 1766. ' After the Quarterly Meeting differentiated into a distinct business meeting, there were three Quarterly Meetings in the colonial period, as follows: (i) Sandwich Quarterly Meeting, which began at least as early as 1680 and originally was composed of Sandwich and Pembroke Monthly Meetings. (2) Rhode Island Quarterly Meeting, which was established in 1699, and was originally composed of Rhode Island, Dartmouth, and Kingstown Monthly Meetings. (3) Salem Quarterly Meeting, which was estabUshed in 1705 and was originally composed of Salem, Hampton, and Dover Monthly Meetings. 2 I find on the Monthly Meeting Records for Newport this minute under date of i2thmo. 14, 1692 : " It is agreed that all our public Meetings be at our Meeting houses as formerly were held. Our Quarterly Meeting was for the reading of Friends' epistles ; but there is now a Meeting once in six weeks for that service." The Quarterly Meeting also prepared, "as way opened for it," epistles to be sent to other Quarterly Meetings. I find distinct reference to this service in the minutes. CH.VII NEW TYPE OF SOCIAL RELIGION 143 the Quarterly Meeting.'' There is a record of an extra- ordinary Quarterly Meeting held in Sandwich, " in Wm. Allen's house," in 1703, with representatives from meet- ings reaching all the way from Rhode Island to Dover, New Hampshire.^ The reader who has imagination will easily see the social importance of these gatherings. Friends from these widely sundered regions, persons of different social standing, of all stages of education and spiritual experience, thus came together, generally for a two days' meeting — were entertained at the homes in the locality where the meeting was held, interchanged ideas, and formed, almost without knowing it, a " group-consciousness " which played a powerful r61e in the life of the Society. More important than the " youths' meetings " in their formative influence over the children were these social visits and these Quarterly Meeting dinners, when the house was filled to bursting with Friends from other sections of the Colony.' Still higher in its scope and more constructive in its functions was the Yearly Meeting, and this again was still more significant for its influence in the formation of " group-consciousness " and of social ideals. As with the other meetings, the Yearly Meeting was at first a large General Meeting for worship and preaching, and for an impressive massing of the Quaker forces. The first of ' Where the need was extensive the case was brought up to the Yearly Meet- ing, as will be seen from the following minute of the Yearly Meeting of 1697 ; "It was proposed to this Meeting the necessity of poor Friends to the Eastward [New Hampshire and Maine, I presume] for some relief : this Meeting did collect ye sum off ten pounds, and did order ye same by ye hands off Samuel CoUings to Matthew and Richard Estes to be distributed by ym. ' ' Itt is desired by this Meeting yt ye ffriends appointed to write to ffriends in England doe also write to ffriends in Long Island, East and West Jersey, and to Philadelphia, conseming ye necessytie off poor f&iends to ye Eastward, and desire their assistance to help relieve them." ^ The following localities sent representatives : Rhode Island Meeting. Dartmouth Salem and Lynn Scituate Sandwich Meeting. Greenwich , , Hampton , , Dover ' As late even as 1784 there were only three Quarterly Meetings for business established. They were (i) Rhode Island, which was held in turn at Smithfield, Dartmouth, Swansea, and Greenwich ; (2) Salem, held at Falmouth in Maine, Dover, Hampton, Salem ; (3) Sandwich, held at Nantucket, Long Plain, Falmouth in Massachusetts, and Sandwich. 144 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i these Yearly Meetings was held at Newport, Rhode Island, in 1 66 1. It seems to have been called at the suggestion of an English Quaker, named George Rofe, who was at that time on a religious mission to this country. He writes to his friend Richard Hubberthorne in 1661 : " We came in at Rhode Island, and we appointed a General Meeting for all Friends in those parts, which was a very great meeting and very precious, and continued four days.''^ This meeting was so large that, according to Bishop, the Boston officials, " made an alarm that the Quakers were gathering to kill the people and fire the town of Boston I " It steadily grew in importance and in numbers, and soon came to be the great event in the Quaker year. From far away Piscataqua at one extreme, and from Long Island at the other, the Friends flocked to Newport, for until 1695 the Quakers on Long Island came to Rhode Island to Yearly Meeting.^ By 1743 it was attended by five thousand Friends, and the attendance continued very large throughout the century. Similar Yearly Meetings were held for many years in different sections of New England as well as at Newport, so that nearly all com- munities where Friends abounded had a large annual visitation.* But the Newport Yearly Meeting was "the 1 Letter of George Rofe to Richard Hubberthorne, i8th November 1661, m the A. R.B. Collection, No. 62, Devonshire House Portfolio. ^ " It is also agreed yt ye Meeting at Long Island shall be from this time a Yearly Meeting, and yt John Boune and John Rodman shall receive all such as shall come to ye Yearly Meeting in Long Island, and correspond with ffriends appointed in London." — Minute of New England Yearly Meeting for 1695. 2 I find the following Yearly Meetings in existence under date of 1693 ; ' ' Duxberry Yearly Meeting of Worship begins ye furst 6th day in every 8th mo. "Salem, ye generall Meeting of Worship begins ye first and second days of every 7th month. " Piscattua (Piscataqua) Yearly Generall Meeting of Worship begins ye 7th fiirst day after Salem Meeting. ' ' Dartmouth Yearly Generall Meeting of Worship begins the 4th sixth day in every 8th month. ' ' Warwick Yearly Generall Meeting of worship begins and is appointed ye second Hirst day in every 3d mo"". ' ' Providence Yearly Generall Meeting of Worship begins ye last ffirst day of the 5th motl". " 4th mo. 14, 1695. — There shall be kept a Meeting at Lin [Lynn], ye third day next after ye Yearly Meeting at Salem is over." Samuel Bownas says : ' ' They [the Friends of New England] have in almost every place once a year a General Meeting which they call a Yearly Meeting, and by this popular abundance more people come together in expectation of something cH. VII NEW TYPE OF SOCIAL RELIGION 145 child of promise " and soon outstripped and gradually swallowed up the others.-' Definite arrangements were made in 1699 for Repre- sentatives to the Yearly Meeting from the Quarterly Meetings, and from this time on the legislative and con- structive aspect of the Yearly Meeting became more pronounced, and less emphasis was put upon it as an occasion for worship and ministry.^ The Monthly Meeting, beginning as we have seen in a very unassuming fashion, soon expanded in importance, and came to have a profoundly formative social influence over the life of the individual members, and it absorbed into the corporate body of the meeting the functions of " cure of souls " and guardian of morals — usually delegated by the Churches to a priest or an ordained clergyman. From the earliest period of the systematic Monthly Meeting it was the custom to read, in a solemn way, a set of " Advices," embodying the religious ideals of the Quaker founders, and setting forth the type of " walk and conversation " which befitted a Friend.^ To these extraordinary to be met with," — Life and Travels of Samuel Bownas {London, 1761), p. 149. ^ I find a record of a Yearly Meeting at Sandwich as late as 1756, and this curious minute arranging for the holding of Providence Yearly Meeting : 5lh mo. II, 1761. — " By epistle from Rhode Island Quarterly Meeting, inform- ing us they have Providence Yearly Meeting altered to begin at Warwick the sixth day before the fourth First day of ye 8th month, and at Providence the Seventh day following, and at Smithfield on First day. For divers reasons offerde at this Meeting it is agreed that said Meeting for the future be altered agreeable to their request. " ^ " Ittis agreed by order and consent of this Meeting, yt the second day of the week be for the business and service of the Meeting for the future, according to the antient order of Truth amongst us, and not for public worship, and yt two ffriends from each Quarterly Meeting, and where no Quarterly Meeting two or more from each Monthly Meeting, to attend ye service of ye Yearly Meeting till business is ended, and as many other sober friends as hath freedom. " — Yearly Meeting Minutes for 1699. The meeting of the ministers, as a meeting apart, began in 1700 under the following minute : 4th mo. 17, 1700. — " It is agreed upon by this Meeting yt ye sixth day morning of ye Yearly Meeting before ye public Meeting for Worship begins be for ye future for Friends of ye Ministry to meet together, and such other sober Friends as hath freedom." ' The following minute of Sandwich Monthly Meeting for Eleventh month, Sth, 1680, indicates that the "Advices" were at this time read four times a year. They are called "The testimonies of Truth's concern." At this Meeting it is ordered "yt the testimonies of Truth's concern are to be read four times in a year at our Monthly Men and Women's Meeting." L 146 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i " Advices " there was added, at least as early as the year 1700, a set of definite "Queries," the reading of which was intended to furnish the members an occasion for inward silent " confessional." ^ The " Queries " called for an examination of the life from at least a dozen moral and spiritual view-points, and tended to present a concrete moral ideal for the daily life at home and in business occupations. When the " Advices " and " Queries " were read the Friends " of light and leading," especially visiting Friends from abroad, used the opportunity for imparting counsel and advice upon practical matters of life among men. There can be no question that all this, presented as it was with religious atmosphere and with all minds in a peculiarly receptive attitude, worked with deep suggestive power and tended to produce a common moral type. But the Monthly Meeting did not stop with public " Queries," and with its admirable method of " group suggestion," it brought positive pressure to bear to mould the lives of the individual into the moral fashion which the group approved. For this purpose there were " Over- seers," who visited the homes and kept a careful watch over the lives of the members. There was, as we should expect, a tendency to make conduct conform to rather stiff and rigid standards, for the Friends to a large degree shared the Puritan ideals in regard to " Christian manners in the world." Then, too, in addition to their scrupulous guardianship over morals, they were always as zealous to maintain certain "testi- monies " which were the badges of their " peculiarity " as a people of the Lord. They were as keen and watchful for deviations from these " testimonies " as the Puritan elders were over deviations from sound theology, for that larger liberty which leaves the individual entirely with his own conscience — with his personal sense of what is ' I find this minute in tlie Records of the Yearly Meeting for 1701 : "Twelve Queries were made at the Quarterly and Monthly Meetings and sent to the Yearly Meeting." Before this time a set of Queries prepared by George Fox had been extensively used. I find this entry in the Sandwich minutes under date of 1673 : "It was ordered that Jedediah Allen pay John Fowler 5 sh. for copying G. ff. Queries. " The custom of preparing set answers to the ' ' Queries " began in I7SS' CH.VII NEW TYPE OF SOCIAL RELIGION 147 right for him — had not yet come. The " minutes " of all types of meetings, from their origin, indicate a highly developed moral sensitiveness, and, all interwoven with this, there appears an excessive concern over things which were in the class of the ceremonial, i.e. things which had a function only as they helped form a " peculiar people." ^ One of the matters which most profoundly concerned these Friends was the guardianship of the marriage of their members. They refused from the very beginning to allow any member to be married by what they called " a priest," for this seemed to them to be the very essence of sacerdotalism. They adopted a simple ceremony by which the bride and groom pledged themselves in marriage " before the Lord and in the presence of Friends " ; and after enduring many hardships they won from the courts the decision that this form of marriage was legal. As the idea developed that Friends were " a peculiar people of the Lord," there naturally went with it a disapproval of the marriage of a Friend with " a person of the world." This soon became a fixed idea, and the monthly meeting records contain a host of minutes which report " dealings " with menibers who have deviated in this all -important matter of marriage. In regard to the prevailing " vices " of the times Friends appear generally to have taken an advanced position. When lotteries were looked upon by almost all Christian people as at least tolerable institutions, and ^ I give two illustrations of the way meetings ' ' watched up " their members on matters of daily life : ' ' The overseers inform this Meeting that two Friends have allowed fiddling, dancing, and playing at cards in their houses, fori which they decline to condemn the offence to Friends' satisfaction. Therefore this Meeting doth appoint Joseph Gifford and Barzellai Tucker to labour with them and make report to the next Monthly Meeting." "This Meeting having considered the answers of the several Quarterly Meetings relating to the extravigant and unnecessary Perry Wiggs, and a concern remaining on the minds of Friends for preventing the same prevailing among us Do conclude, and it is the judgment of this Meeting that all Friends who suppose that they have need of wiggs, ought to take the advice and approbation of the visitors \i.e. overseers] of their respective Meetings before they proceed to get one. And it is the tender advice, and brotherly request of this Meeting that all be careful to observe the same, and not in a careless or overly-minded cutt of their hair (which is given for a covering) to putt on a wigg or indecent capp which has been observed of late years to be a growing practice among too many of the young men in several parts, to the troubel of many honest Friends, it plainly appearing (in some) for an imitation and joyning with the spirit and fashion of the world. " 148 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. , were being used by churches and educational institutions as a beneficial provision for raising funds for the work of the Lord, New England Friends, " in the light of Truth," saw that they were pernicious, and refused to allow their members to profit by them. This minute from Dartmouth Meeting shows the prevailing sentiment among Friends as early as 1759. " Whereas we understand that there has been a practice of late amongst our younger set of people of making lotteries which we think to be of very hurtful consequence, therefore, it is the advice of this Meeting for all under our care to be careful not to be in such practice, and that all Friends belonging to this Meeting endeavour to suppress the same." ^ At a time when the use of spirituous liquors was an almost universal custom, Friends were nevertheless very sensitive on the subject. They began, from the first of their existence as a people, to insist on a clean, temperate life for their members. The Minutes of all the monthly meetings from 1673 down contain many items like this : — " A Friend of Richmond Meeting hath taken strong liquor to excess, a committee is appointed to labour with him." "A complaint was brought against a Friend for excessive drinking, this meeting appoints two Friends to discourse with said Friend." "The overseers inform that a Friend hath suffered too much liberty in his tavern which tends to bring a reproach on Truth, wherefore Joseph Tucker and Abraham Tucker are appointed to labour with him." ^ 1 A little later horse-racing was included in the list of "vices" which could not be tolerated as the following minute shows : ' ' 2/15/1762. — ^Whereas we understand that horse-racing is a prevailing practice therefore the Meeting doth conclude to make a minute against all such practices. And if Friends are found guilty of any such practice they are liable to be dealt with as offenders." 2 I find in the Records of the Yearly IVIeeting for 1784 a minute on the subject which seems to me a noble paper for the eighteenth century to have produced. ' ' The excessive use of Spirituous liquors of all kinds has for a long time been seen by our Society to be a practice tending to lead from calmness and innocency to the many evils which are the consequences of intemperance, and a concern having arisen for the spreading of this Testimony, not only to the disuse of distilled spirituous liquors amongst us except as a medicine, but that others also may by our example be encouraged to restrain its use' within the limits of Truth, we recommend to all Friends everywhere, carefully to look at CH.VII NEW TYPE OF SOCIAL RELIGION 149 Fidelity to one's word of promise was held to be a most sacred obligation, and every Friend was expected to make righteousness in trade and dealing " an affair of honour." Every book of Monthly Meeting Records has many minutes similar in spirit to the following : "There was a complaint brought up that a Friend refuses to fulfil a promise he made two years ago respecting performing of his proportion of work on the high ways, therefore, in con- sequence of said complaint we do appoint John Gififord, Benjamin Tripp, and Peleg Huddestone to inspect into said complaint, and if they find the Friend refuse to fulfil his promise agreeable to said complaint, to labour with said Friend to fulfil it, so that Truth and the professors thereof may not suffer on that account any longer." " There was brought a complaint to this Meeting against a Friend for refusing to come to a settlement in a division of a fence in the line between him and another Friend, therefore we do appoint Nicholas Haviland and James Soule to labour with said Friend to do what they shall think reasonable in the case after they have informed themselves the circumstances thereof" " The overseers informed that there is a bad report concern- ing two members salting up beef, and exposing it for sale, which was not merchantable ; and they have made some inquiry, and do not find things clear, therefore this Meeting appoints a committee to make inquiry." Under no consideration or provocation might a Friend take an oath, either as an " expletive " to relieve his mind, or as a judicial sign that he was about to tell the truth and nothing but the truth, for he was under a sacred obligation to make his ordinary word as true as a bond. In Rhode Island this was an easy matter, as the statutes of that Colony always made provision for an affirmation the motives of being concerned therewith not only for using, but distilling, importing, trading, or handing out to others, who from habit may have acquired a thirst, and inclination after it, tending to their hurt ; we tenderly advise all such as are concerned therein, to centre down to the principle, leading to universal righteousness, and as we apprehend a continuance in such practices, will in this day of light weaken the hands not only of those individuals concerned to further the reformation, but tend greatly to, obstruct Society from holding up a standard to this important Testimony, as becometh our holy profession. We entreat, therefore, those who have begun well, and made advances in the way towards their own peace, that as soon as may be, they forbear the said practices that a line ■nay in due time be drawn, and the standard be raised and spread to the nation. ISO QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i instead of an oath, but this provision was not made in Massachusetts until 1759. Friends felt that it was even more important to keep the Society absolutely clear of everything that belonged to warfare, or which encouraged fighting with what were known as "carnal weapons," for the Quaker had no objection to any warfare which he could properly call " spiritual " ! This " concern " ran up against a deep- seated natural instinct, and it entailed, of course, a harvest of difficulties, particularly in the early days of Indian warfare. During the French and Indian War of Queen Anne's reign Friends were subjected to very severe sufferings, and stringent measures were taken to force them at this time to do military service.^ At the time of the Louisburg Expedition in the campaign of 1758-59 the Quakers in Massachusetts were forced to hire men to go as substitutes ; and when they refused to pay for substitutes, as they generally did, their property was distrained to cover the amount. Moses Farnum of Uxbridge, Massachusetts, in 1759 headed a petition to the Legislature setting forth that the sums assessed against the Quakers were greatly in excess of the actual amounts paid for their substitutes. On investigation this was found to be true, and large sums were returned to the Friends who had suffered.^ The difficulty of being a " consistent Friend " in the critical period of the Revolu- tionary War was, of course, even greater, for now the Quaker testimony came into violent collision with the ^ The following minute of the Yearly Meeting for 1712 gives a glimpse of the situation : — "4/12/1712. — At our Generall Yearly Meeting held at Portsmouth. Peter Varney and John Kenny were imprisoned ye 8th day of sth month 1711 to go in ye expidition to Canada, and remained under confinment until ye Sth month 171 1 being under ye command of Sydrach Walton who suffered them not to be abused during the time of their voyage as per account brought into this meeting. ' ' John Terry and Moses Tucker were likewise imprisoned to gb on ye said expidition to Canada, and being in hopes of getting discharged went to Boston, and after much labour thereabouts were nevertheless sent as prisoners to the castle at Boston, and from thence conveyed by force on board Transport under ye command of Major Roberton, whose hard usage was such that one of ye above Ffriends (John Terry) died within twenty-four hours after their return to Boston, as may be seen by a particular account thereof presented to this Meeting." ^ See Provincial Laws of Massachusetts, xvi. 488 and 521. CK.VII NEW TYPE OF SOCIAL RELIGION 151 fundamental instinct of patriotism. There was, however, no parley on the part of the Meetings — principle was principle — and no man could remain a Friend if he participated " in the spirit of war." Even so blue-blooded a Friend as Nathanael Greene of Rhode Island — a patriot of the patriots — had his name expunged from the list of members for the ofifence of " taking arms." It was when the colonies were face to face with this war with the mother country in 1775 that New England Friends first organised a meeting distinctly called "The Meeting for Sufferings," composed of delegates from all sections and designed to deal with the difficulties likely to arise from the approaching catastrophe of war.^ The work of oversight was not confined to moral and spiritual matters. It touched the whole of life. The most important aspect of it from a social point of view was the care bestowed upon those who were in trouble or in financial straits. It belonged to the sacred " honour of Truth " that no Friend should be allowed to suffer want, or should be compelled to receive support from the town- ship. The amount of time which some of these capable and practical Friends must have spent in looking after the needs of poor members gives one a very wholesome respect for the sincerity of their Christianity.^ In times of general calamity, widespread suffering, or the havoc of war, the Meetings which were less exposed raised large sums of money for the relief of suffering Friends and for others. This outreaching relief work was carried on throughout the entire period of this history ; but it finds its best illustration in the effort of Friends to relieve the sufferings which resulted from the siege of Boston during ' This Meeting for Sufferings eventually took on a great variety of functions, and managed the important public affairs of the Society in the interim between Yearly Meetings. ^ This Minute will illustrate what was happening in every Quaker community : "And whereas there has been a great charge arisen upon a man Friend by reason of his lameness, and Doctor's charges, we think it our duty to see into the affair, and order Abram Tucker, Isaac Smith, and Peleg Russell to see what ye charge is, and what way he is to pay it." " We cannot find that the man Friend can do anything valuable towards pay- ing the Doctor for curing his leg. The charge is ;^i5, 14s. lawful money which this Meeting hath concluded to pay." IS2 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i the Revolutionary War. An appeal was made to Friends in Pennsylvania and New Jersey to join in these extensive relief measures, and the extraordinary sum of nineteen hundred and sixty-eight pounds sterling was expended under the care of a committee of the Meeting for Suffer- ings. This committee visited General Washington and General Howe, explaining that their mission was visiting the fatherless and widows, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, without distinction of sects or parties. The Generals would not allow the Friends to pass through the lines into the city of Boston, but arrangements were made for them to send in their funds to be distributed by Friends who were shut up in the besieged city. The members of the committee then took up in person the laborious task of relieving the distress — as a kind of eighteenth century Red Cross Society — in the towns about the city, where multitudes of people " were in want of victuals, wood, and clothing." In Salem, for instance, the Friends, in company with the Selectmen of the town, went from house to house and distributed their relief through the very streets along which Quakers had been whipped a hundred years before. There stands on the Records of the town of Salem for 1775, and again in 1776, a "vote of thanks" to the Friends for their generous relief in this time of need.^ The towns which were visited and relieved in like manner, were Lynn, Marblehead, Charleston, Medfield, Bolton, Lancaster, Marlborough, Sudbury, Weston, Woburn, Reading, Sherborn, Holliston, Northbury, and Waltham, and through these towns — many of them towns through which Quakers had been whipped — working in company with the Selectmen, the Friends, with personal painstaking care, dispensed their gifts of love.^ One of the most stubborn fights in the spiritual war- fare of the New England Quakers was for freedom to worship God as their own hearts dictated, a privilege now common to all Anglo-Saxon peoples, and also for ^ See Annals of Salem t ii. 399. ' The full accounts of this work are given in the Records of ' ' The Meeting for Sufferings." cH. VII NEW TYPE OF SOCIAL RELIGION 153 freedom from supporting any system of worship which their consciences did not approve. The privilege to worship in their own way and in their own gatherings was won at terrific cost, as we have seen, but it was comparatively quickly won. It was discovered by an overwhelming demonstration that the denial of the privilege could be maintained only by the extermination of the sect, and thus there was no rational alternative but to yield. The other privilege, the privilege of exemption from tithes for the support of the established ministry, was won only by a long, hard fight, but when it was won it was won for everybody. From the first Friends refused to pay the Church "tithes," which they called "priests' rates," for they insisted that " spiritual ministry " must be without money and without price. They were imprisoned for their refusal, and they were furthermore subjected to a capricious seizure of goods, roughly estimated by the authorities to equal in value the amount of the tithes. Cows, horses, pigs, farm produce, wearing apparel, house- hold silver, wagons, implements of all sorts were carried away, while the poor family looked helplessly on and saw themselves stripped to pay for a ministry which supported itself by such methods ! ' The Meetings, with their splendid group spirit, made these losses a corporate matter and all shared, as far as they could, the sufferings of each. The Meetings rose to the crisis and year after year raised great sums to cover the losses of Friends both at home and in remote sections.^ But they did not stop with passive resistance to the tithe system. They laboured for three-quarters of a century by every ' This minute from Dartmouth Monthly Meeting will illustrate the sort of distraints which were endured : ' ' 4/2/1725. — The accounts of some sufferings of Peleg Slocum, and John Tucker having their creatiu-es taken away off their Islands (called EUzabeth Islands) by distraint by John Mayhew, constable of Chilmark, was presented to the Meeting. " Taken from Peleg Slocum eighty sheep for the Priests' rate and towards the building of a Presbyterian Meeting house, ye said sheep were sold for £34. "And taken from John Tucker on ye'like occasion one horse sold for ;f 10, los. and one heifer sold for £2, los., demand was for £7, 15s. 4d." " I give three Minutes from the Yearly Meeting to illustrate this corporate action : "4/11/1730. — The amount of sufferings brought up from the Quarterly Meet- 154 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i method known to their intelligence, or "revealed by the mind of Truth" to get the tyranny abolished by statute.^ In the year 1678, four prominent Friends, Edward Wanton, Joseph Coleman, Nathaniel Fitsrandal and William Allen, presented to the General Court of Plymouth, "conscientiously and in all tenderness," their reasons why they could not " give maintenance to the established preachers." "We suppose," they say, "it's well enough known that we have never been backward to contribute our assistance in our estates and persons, where we could act without scruple of conscience, nor in the particular case of the country rate . . . until this late contrivance of mixing your preachers' maintenance there- with," which, in short, they declare they cannot under any circumstances pay. They thereupon undertake at some length to prove from the New Testament that " settled maintenance upon preachers " is contrary to the gospel. Whether their exegesis carried weight with the Court or not, their concluding remark must have occasioned some serious reflection : " We request, for conclusion, you will please to consider whether you may not prejudice yourselves in your public interest with the King {you your- selves having your liberty but upon sufferance) if you should compel any to conform in any respect to such a church government or ministry as is repugnant to the Church of England. We leave the whole to your serious ing are as foUoweth : For Priests rates taken from Friends in Salem Quarterly Meeting ;f 118, lis." "4/11/1731. — FriendsSufferingsfromRochester, Massachusetts, for priests rates £'2.%, 17s. Friends suffering from Salem for Priests rates ;^io, 17s. 6d." " nl&l\Ti2. — Friends sufferings from Priests rates in Kittery in the County of York and Province of Maine ;^I5, los." ^ The work of petitioning the governing authorities at home and abroad went on year after year with admirable persistence. Here is an interesting minute of the year 1708 : "It being proposed under the consideration of this Meeting the detriament yt may attend Friends by an act past in the Massachusetts Provence in the year 1706 joining the Priests rate to the Province tax [making it extremely difficult for Friends to escape paying it] this Meeting doth desire, or order, Richard Borden and Thomas Cornell Jr. in behalf of said Meeting to inform the Governor thereof by way of writing, requesting his relief therein, otherwise tn signify to him that they shall address the Queen [ Queen Anne] in that matter ; and said Cornell to sign the same in behalf of the Meeting, being clerk thereof ; and Joseph Wanton, and Richiu-d Borden are appointed to do said writing to ye Governor and speal [spell] the same." cH.vii NEW TYPE OF SOCIAL RELIGION 155 consideration." ^ The writers of this document evidently remembered the " King's missive." A half-century later, in 1724, the English King, through his council, did finally declare himself in no uncertain words on this matter of " maintenance of ministers," and this second missive, this time from George I., though not as dramatic as the famous one from Charles II., hastened the end of persecution for refusal to pay church rates. Appeal to the King had been made in 1724 by Thomas Richardson and Richard Partridge on behalf of Joseph Anthony, John Sisson, John Akin and Philip Taber, Quaker assessors of Dartmouth and Tiverton, who had been imprisoned in New Bristol jail for refusing to collect taxes to support the ministry. Their case was argued before the Privy Council and the following significant decision was rendered at a Court held at St. James', the 2nd day of June, 1724, and attended by the King's Most Excellent Majesty, His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and thirteen other members of the Court. It was as follows : " His Majesty in Council is graciously pleased ... to remit the additional taxes of j^ioo and £T2, IIS. which were to have been assessed on the towns of Dartmouth and Tiverton [for the maintenance of Pres- byterian ministers who are not of their persuasion].^ And His Majesty is hereby further pleased to order that the said Joseph Anthony, John Sisson, John Akin, and Philip Taber be immediately released from their imprisonment, on account thereof, which the governor, lieutenant- governor, or commander-in-chief for the time being of His Majesty's said province of Massachusetts Bay, and all others whom it may concern are to take notice of, and yield obedience thereunto." ^ These persistent efforts, made year after year to secure relief from these "rates," finally bore fruit, and the ' The Hinckley Papers, pp. 18-20. ^ This clause is in the report of the Privy Council which was approved by the king. ' The Petition and the decision of the Privy Council, with the King's message are given in full in Gough's History of the Quakers (Dublin, 1790), iv. 218-226. 156 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. . colonial government of Massachusetts passed a law in 1746 giving Friends temporary exemption from all charges for the maintenance of ministers. The Yearly Meeting appointed a committee in 1747 to petition the General Court of Massachusetts to make this law perpetual. They succeeded for the moment in getting only another temporary act of exemption, which, however, very soon became a permanent law ; and from this time on the subject disappears from the minutes, and the Quaker enjoyed his own meeting in peace and kept his cows and his silver spoons for his own use I The next great contest into which the Friends threw their energies was a more unselfish cause and one which was grounded distinctly in humanitarian principles — I mean the conflict against human slavery. The Narragansett Bay country was the region where negro slavery most " flourished " in New England. Ships sailed from Newport to the coast of Guinea and brought back live freight which was sold among the prosperous colonial farmers along the fertile shores of the Bay.^ There were, too, slaves in many other parts of the New England colonies. There was little or no moral sentiment in the colonies against slavery in the seventeenth century, and Friends fell in with the custom, as others did, with few apparent scruples. They were, however, from the first awake to the fact that black people were human, and deserved proper treatment as human beings, though they evidently did not see, before the middle of the eighteenth century, that slavery per se must go.^ ' See Caroline Hazard's College Tom (Boston, 1893) p. 2S- "^ These minutes from Sandwich Monthly Meeting are interesting as illustrating the way the meeting dealt with inhumanity to slaves : " 3/3°/i7"- — Whereas a woman Friend hath given over to hardness of heart to such a degree she hath been not only consenting but encoui"aging the unmerciful whipping or beating of her negro man servant, he being stript naked, and hanged up by the hands, in his master's house, and then beating him, or whipping him so unmercifully that it is to be feared that it was in some measiu'e the occasion of his death that followed soon after, the which we do account is not only unchristian but inhuman for which cause we find ourselves concerned to testify to the world that we utterly disown all such actions, and perticularly the Friend above mentioned." " 10/17/1711. — A paper being presented to this Meeting from the Friend who cH. VII NEW TYPE OF SOCIAL RELIGION 157 The enlightened members, even in the first quarter of the eighteenth century, " felt a weighty concern " to have the Society "cleared" of what seemed to them an evil, and their influence was great enough to get the matter well before the Yearly Meeting at Newport, and to get this minute adopted in 1 7 1 7 : "A weighty concern being on this Meeting concerning the importing and keeping slaves. This Meeting therefore refers it to the consideration of Friends everywhere to waite for ye wisdom of God how to discharge themselves in that weighty affair, and desires it may be brought up from our Monthly and Quarterly Meetings to our next Yearly Meeting, and also yt merchants do write their correspondents in the islands and elsewhere to dis- courage their sending any more [slaves] in order to be sold by Friends here." Again in 1727 the Yearly Meeting rose to a more direct and positive position, indicating that the moral tide had risen during the decade. The minute of this date declares : "It is the sense of this Meeting, that the importation of Negroes from their native country and relations is not a com- mendable nor allowable practice and that practice is censured by this Meeting." Thomas Hazard of South Kingstown, Rhode Island, generally called " College Tom," seems to have been one of the first Friends to awake to the evil of slave-holding, though he was brought up in the very atmosphere of it. He was sent, while still in his youth, by his father to Connecticut to buy cattle to stock the farm upon which at his marriage he was to settle. While there he fell in with a friend of his father's, a deacon of the Church, who invited him to his home. The deacon in conversation made the chance remark that " Quakers were not Christian people." The young Quaker, fresh from college, was ready for a hot argument, and was marshalling in his mind the arguments of attack when all his heat was was disowned for unmercifully beating her Negro, wherein she desires to come into unity with Friends, and ye sense of this Meeting is that she should wait until Friends have a sense that she is still to be accepted, and Eleazer Slocum and William Soule are appointed to give her ye mind of the Meeting." 158 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i suddenly dampened by the deacon's reason for his bold statement — "they are not Christians because they hold their fellow-men in slavery!" The Quaker youth had no more to say ; but the stray shot took deep effect and the son came back to his father with altered views on the question. "College Tom's" father was at this time — about 1730 — one of the largest slave-owners in New England, and he vigorously objected to his son's new ideas, threatening to disinherit him if he persisted in the view; but the conscientious son remained unmoved, and cultivated his farm with free labour.^ He seems also to have quietly propagated his ideas, for we learn that his intimate friend, Jeremiah Austin, soon after this freed his one slave inherited from his father. Meantime the spirit of opposition to slavery was steadily growing throughout the Quaker groups scattered over the New England colonies, and Yearly Meeting minutes of 1743 and 1744 indicate that the "inner eye" was getting clearer in many a Quaker breast. "4/9/1743. — It being represented by the Quarterly Meeting of Rhode Island that the practice of keeping slaves is a matter of uneasiness to many concerned Friends, and the minutes formerly made by this Meeting being also considered. It is agreed by this meeting that we request by our Epistles to the Yearly Meeting of Friends in Pennsylvania an account of what they have done in that matter." "4/7/1744. — By the Epistle we have received from Phila- delphia concerning slaves, this Meeting is encouraged to revive, and recommend to Friends the careful observation of the minute of this Meeting made in 1717 concerning that matter, and that they also refrain from buying them when imported, and to make return by the epistles from the several Quarterly Meetings how the same is observed." 1 See College Tom, chapter iii. A law was enacted in the Rhode Island colony in 1729 allowing a master to manumit a slave provided said master should give a security of ;f 100 that the manumitted slave should not become a public charge. Bishop Berkeley during his stay in Rhode Island became deeply interested in the negro slaves and urged that they should be baptized, using these enlightened words : ' ' Let me beseech you to consider them not merely as slaves, but as mm slaves and women slaves, who have the same frame and faculties as yourselves, and have souls capable of being made happy, and reason and understanding to receive instruction." — Updike's History of Nqitragansitt Church, pp. 176. i77- CH. vn NEW TYPE OF SOCIAL RELIGION 159 In 1747 New England was visited for the first time by that saintly Quaker from Mount Holly, New Jersey, John-'Woolman, whose sensitive soul was already burning with love for his dark-skinned friends in slavery. He visited " among Friends in the colony of Rhode Island " and probably came into personal relation with Thomas Hazard, as Updike calls the latter John Woolman's friend. One of the earliest documents against slavery in New England, and certainly one of the quaintest ever written, is a letter of Richard Smith of Groton, Connecticut, to South Kingstown Monthly Meeting of which he was a member. He declares that " the Lord by his free Goodness Jiath given me a clear sight of the cruelty of making a slave of one that was by nature as free as my own children" and to turn his " clear sight " into practice he concluded : "I hereby declare that now that my Negro garl Jane hath arived to eighteen years of age she shall go out free from bondage as free as if Shee had been free born, and that my Heirs, Executors or Administraters shall have no power over her or her postirity no more than if she had been free born." ^ To his straightforward, downright Letter Richard Smith added a curious postscript which contains another item of his experience : " Now my Friends to tell you plainly, some years befor this my intent was to have bought Some Negro Slaves for to have Done my work to have Saved my hiring of help. But when I was about buying them I was forbiden by the same Power that now Causes me to set this Garl at Liberty, for the matter was Set befor me in a Clear manner more Clear than what mortal man Could have Done and theirfore I belive it is not write for me to Shrink or hide in a thing of So Create a Consamment as to Give my Consent to do to others Contrary to what we our Selves would be willing to be don unto." ^ ' Records of Greenwich Monthly Meeting. ^ The Monthly Meeting entered this minute : ' ' This meeting received a paper of Richard Smith as his testimony against keeping slaves and his intention to free his negro girl, which paper he hath a mind to lay before the Quarterly Meeting, all which is referred for further consideration." The matter did not receive much attention at the time, and meeting after meeting passed without definite action, but Richard Smith's "testimony" was good leaven, and soon the whole lump was permeated with it. i6o QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i Three years after this testimony — in 1760 — came the epoch-making second visit of John Woolman, now fully alive to his Divine mission in behalf of the slave. He writes : "We had five meetings in Narragansett [the section covered by Greenwich Monthly Meeting] and went thence to Newport on Rhode Island. ... In several families in the country where we lodged, I felt an engagement on my mind to have a conference with them in private concerning their slaves ; and through Divine aid I was favored to give up thereto. ... I do not repine at having so unpleasant a task assigned me, but look with awfulness to Him who appoints to His servants their respective employments." ^ The crisis of his visit came at the time of his return to Newport for Yearly Meeting, after having completed extensive travels over New England, reaching "eighty miles beyond Boston eastward." His own quaint way of telling the story is most impressive : "Understanding that a large number of slaves had been imported from Africa into that town, and were then on sale by a member of our Society my appetite failed, and I grew out- wardly weak, and had a feeling of the condition of Habakkuk, as thus expressed, ' When I heard, my belly trembled, my lips quivered, 1 trembled in myself, that I might rest in the day of trouble.' I had many cogitations, and was sorely distressed. I was desirous that Friends might petition the Legislature to use their endeavours to discourage the future importation of slaves, for I saw that this trade was a great evil, and tended to multiply troubles, and to bring distresses on the people for whose welfare my heart was deeply concerned. But I perceived several difficulties in regard to petitioning, and such was the exercise of my mind that I thought of endeavouring to get an opportunity to speak a few words in the House of Assembly, then sitting in town. " This exercise came upon me in the afternoon on the second day of the Yearly Meeting, and on going to bed I got no sleep till my mind was wholly resigned thereto. In the morning I inquired of a Friend how long the Assembly was likely to continue sitting, who told me it was to be prorogued that day or the next As I was desirous to attend the business of the meeting, and perceived the Assembly was likely to separate before the business ' Journal, p. i6i. cH.vn NEW TYPE OF SOCIAL RELIGION i6i was over, after considerable exercise, humbly seeking to the Lord for instruction, my mind settled to attend on the business of the meeting ; on the last day of which I had prepared a short essay of a petition to be presented to the Legislature, if way opened. And being informed that there were some appointed by that Yearly Meeting to speak with those in authority on cases relating to the Society, I opened my mind to several of them, and showed them the essay I had made, and afterwards I opened the case in the meeting for business, in substance as follows : " ' I have been under a concern for some time on account of the great number of slaves which are imported into this colony. I am aware that it is a tender point to speak to, but apprehend I am not clear in the sight of Heaven without doing so. I have prepared an essay of a petition to be presented to the Legislature, if way open ; and what I have to propose to this meeting is that some Friends may be named to withdraw and look over it, and report whether they believe it suitable to be read in the meeting. If they should think well of reading it, it will remain for the meeting to consider whether to take any further notice of it, as a meeting, or not.' After a short conference some Friends went out, and, looking over it, expressed their willingness to have it read, which being done, many expressed their unity with the proposal, and some signified that to have the subjects of the petition enlarged upon, and signed out of meeting by such as were free, would be more suitable than to do it there. Though I expected at first that if it was done it would be in that way, yet such was the exercise of my mind that to move it in the hearing of Friends when assembled appeared to me as a duty, for my heart yearned towards the inhabitants of these parts, believing that by this trade there had been an increase of inquietude amongst them, and way had been made for the spreading of a spirit opposite to that meekness and humility which is a sure resting-place for the soul ; and that the continuance of this trade would not only render their healing more difficult, but would increase their malady. Having proceeded thus far, I felt easy to leave the essay amongst Friends, for them to proceed in it as they believed best. " The Yearly Meeting being over, there yet remained on my mind a secret though heavy exercise, in regard to some leading active members about Newport, who were in the practice of keeping slaves. This I mentioned to two ancient Friends who came out of the country, and proposed to them, if way opened, to have some conversation with those members. One of them and I, having consulted one of the most noted elders who had slaves, he, in a respectful manner, encouraged me to proceed to M 1 62 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i clear myself of what lay upon me. Near the beginning of the Yearly Meeting, I had had a private conference with this said elder and his wife, concerning their slaves, so that the way seemed clear to me to advise with him about the manner of proceeding. I told him I was free to have a conference with them altogether in a private house ; or if he thought they would take it unkind to be asked to come together, and to be spoken with in the hearing of one another, I was free to spend some time amongst them, and to visit them all in their own houses. He expressed his liking to the first proposal, not doubting their willingness to come together ; and, as I proposed a visit to only ministers, elders, and overseers, he named some others whom he desired might also be present. A careful messenger being wanted to acquaint them in a proper manner, he offered to go to all their houses, to open the matter to them — and did so. About the eighth hour the next morning we met in the meeting- house chamber, the last mentioned country Friend, my companion, and John Storer being with us. After a short time of retirement, I acquainted them with the steps I had taken in procuring that meeting, and opened the concern I was under, and we then proceeded to a free conference upon the subject My exercise was heavy, and I was deeply bowed in spirit before the Lord, who was pleased to favour with the seasoning virtue of truth, which wrought a tenderness amongst us ; and the subject was mutually handled in a calm and peaceable spirit. At length, feeling my mind released from the burden which I had been under, I took my leave of them in a good degree of satisfaction ; and by the tenderness they manifested in regard to the practice, and the concern several of them expressed in relation to the manner of disposing of their negroes after their decease, I believed that a good exercise was spreading amongst them ; and I am humbly thankful to God, who supported my mind and preserved me in a good degree of resignation through these trials." 1 This tender soul, by his gentle spirit and his words which seemed given him from above, moved many Friends to a higher moral level. The advance is very apparent in the minute of the Yearly Meeting adopted this year : " We fervently warn all in profession with us, that they be careful to avoid being in any way concerned in reaping the unrighteous profits of that iniquitous practice in dealing in • Journal, pp. 163-165 and 166-168. cH. VII NEW TYPE OF SOCIAL RELIGION 163 negroes. We can do no less than, with the greatest earnestness, impress it upon Friends everywhere, that they endeavour to keep their hands clear of this unrighteous gain of oppression." A clause was added to the Queries at this same Yearly Meeting, asking if Friends who hold slaves " treat them with tenderness, impress God's fear in their minds, promote their attending places of religious worship, and give those that are young, at least, so much learning that they may be capable of reading," it being taken for granted that no Friend was to buy any new slaves. From this date onward the light spread rapidly, and the Society went to work with zeal, doubtless sometimes exhibited in harsh and narrow ways, to clear its skirts not only of traffic in slaves, but of ownership of them as well. Shortly after John Woolman's visit, Greenwich Monthly Meeting brought its member, Samuel Rodman, " under dealing " " on account of his buying a negro slave," and passed judgment against his act. The advice of the Quarterly and Yearly Meetings was asked in the matter, and both these meetings confirmed the Monthly Meeting in its " Sence and Judgment," which was " that there ought to go out a publick Testimony and Denial of Samuel Rodman " ; he was accordingly disowned.-^ In 1769 Greenwich Monthly Meeting sent a request to the Yearly Meeting, through the Quarterly Meeting, that the " Query" of 1760 should be so changed as " not to imply that the holding of slaves was allowable." As is the custom with Friends, such a weighty proposal, affecting the affairs of many members, would receive most careful consideration, and a conclusion would be arrived at only as " the way of Truth " opened. The first step was to appoint at the Yearly Meeting in 1769 a com- mittee of eleven, made up of the leading men of the Society, to collect information, and to visit all slave-holding ^ I find this minute on the Records of Newport Monthly Meeting for 7/29/1761 ; "A Friend appeared in this meeting and condemned his conduct in importing of Negroes, and selling some, and hopes he shall be more careful for the future, and desires Friends to put it by, which is taken for satisfaction." The famous case of continued dealing with Joshua Rathbun, beginning in 1765 and covering eight years, is given at length in Caroline Hazard's Narraganseit Friends' I pp. 144-152- i64 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i Friends in the territory of the Yearly Meeting to " dissuade them from the practice of keeping slaves." The report of this committee, given in 1 77 1, is a valuable document, and shows pretty clearly the prevailing state of mind. It is as follows : " We have pretty generally visited the members belonging to the Yearly Meeting who are possessed of negroes as slaves, and have laboured with them respecting setting such at liberty that are suitable for freedom. Our visits mostly seemed to be kindly accepted, some Friends manifested a disposition to set such at liberty as were suitable ; some others not having so clear a sight of such an unreasonable servitude as could be desired, were unwilling to comply with the advice ; a few others, whom we have with sorrow to remark were mostly of the elder sort, manifested a disposition to keep them still in a continued state of bondage." Two years later, in 1773, the Meeting faced the question of the " Query " in this plain and straightforward fashion : " In regard to the Query from Rhode Island Quarterly Meeting proposing the freeing of all slaves, it is our sense and judgment that Truth not only requires the young of capacity and ability, but likewise the aged and impotent, and all in a state of infancy and nonage, among Friends to be discharged and set free from a state of slavery that we do no more claim property in the human race as we do in the brutes that perish." Under this decision of the supreme legislative body of New England Friends, the subordinate meetings now went to work everywhere to carry out the spirit and principle of 1773, and the records for the next ten years contain numerous minutes of " dealing " with Quaker slave-owners, showing in every case that the only way for a Friend owning a slave to avoid disownment was to " give the negro a manumission to Friends' satisfaction." The most celebrated case of " dealing " in New England was that of Stephen Hopkins, a member of Smithfield Monthly Meeting. He had been governor of the colony of Rhode Island for nine annual terms. He was easily the foremost citizen of his colony, but he owned one slave cH.vn NEW TYPE OF SOCIAL RELIGION 165 woman and would not set her free. This is what the meeting did with the case : "The matter concerning Stephen Hopkins holding a negro woman as a slave was considered, and as he still refuses to set her at liberty, though often requested, this meeting puts him from under their care, and appoints Moses Farnum and George Comstock to draw up a paper of denial against him, and bring to next Monthly Meeting." ^ As soon as the machinery was well in motion for the removal of every trace of human slavery from the Quaker group, positive efforts were at once inaugurated to bring influence to bear in shaping legislation in the direction of abolition. In 1774 this minute was adopted at the Yearly Meeting : "This Meeting, manifesting a concern that the liberty of the Africans might be fully restored, we appoint our Friends Thomas Hazard, Ezekiel Comstock, Thomas Lapham, Jr., Stephen Hoxie, Joseph Congdon, Isaac Lawton, and Moses Farnum, a committee to use their influence at the Generall Assembly of the Colony of Rhode Island, or with the members thereof, that such laws may be made as will tend to the abolition of slavery, and to get such laws repealed as in any way encourages it." ^ And in 1787 a powerful memorial was sent from the Yearly Meeting to the General Court of Massachusetts, urging that as that commonwealth had been " the first on this continent to constitutionally abolish slavery " in its domain, so it should now formulate legislation to prevent its citizens from engaging in " the unrighteous traffic " in slaves, " manifesting thereby," they say, " your endeavours that the great revolution of this country, founded on a declaration against invasion of civil liberty, may not be tarnished by suffering your subjects to continue a traffic which perpetuates slavery." A boy born in 1807, the descendant of ancestors who had taken part in this slow ' "Drawing up a paper of denial" is a euphemism for "disowning," i.e. expulsion from membership. As Stephen Hopkins went out of the Qualter Society his friend Moses Brown of Providence came in, and as a preparation to this step freed all his slaves. See Augustine Jones' Moses Brown : A Sketch. " Rhode Island Legislature passed an Act that very year, 1774, by which the enslaving of negroes was for ever prohibited. Stephen Hopkins was the author of this famous Bill. i66 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i Quaker uprising against the wicked custom of enslaving men, was above all others to sound the trumpet against it in the nineteenth century, and was to stand in the front of the moral battle for freedom — John Greenleaf Whittier. Friends have always emphasized the importance of education, and wherever Quakerism flourished the school- house followed close after the " meeting-house," while in some notable instances there has been one building for both. The first minute on education which I have found in New England is on the Records of Newport Monthly Meeting under date of twelfth month 24th, 1684: " Upon request and desire of Christian Loddwick to have the use of the Meeting House in Newport for keeping of a school. Friends, upon consideration and desire to do him good, do grant it and are also willing to give him what encouragement they can." ^ The course taken by the Newport Friends was a very usual one in any Quaker community. For the first hundred years of their history the New England Friends had only these local schools for the " guarded education " of their children, but in the 'seventies of the eighteenth century there appears to have been a powerful awakening to the need of broader education and for a more adequate educational system. A large committee of broad-minded men was appointed at the Yearly Meeting of 1779, and the Quarterly Meetings were asked to appoint co-operat- ing committees of " solid Friends," who after the usual careful and weighty deliberation, carried on for three years, recommended the establishment of a central school for the entire Yearly Meeting, one of its functions being the ' There are two further minutes which throw interesting light on the history of this school : — 12/26/1711. — " The Friends appointed to lay out as much land as might be thought suitable for to set a school-house on, made report that they have laid out a certain piece of land adjoining to Sam. Easton's land containing sixty feet' fronting upon the lane and eighty feet deep. " 6/26/1718. — "The proprietors of the school-house in Newport have freely surrendered and given up their rights in said School-house to the Monthly Meeting to be continued by said Meeting for a school-house, and that said Meeting pay to the several proprietors what they have advanced more than their subscriptions within one year's time with reasonable interest. The money advanced by tlie several proprietors which is to be paid by this meeting is ;fs6:4:8." cH. vii NEW TYPE OF SOCIAL RELIGION 167 preparation of teachers for the local communities. It was a difficult matter to fix upon a satisfactory location, but finally Portsmouth, R.I., was selected as the favoured place. The school was accordingly opened there in 1784, being the first Yearly Meeting School established in America. Isaac Lawton was selected to be the " master " of it, and he accepted the position in the " trust that he will receive seventy-five pounds per year to keep the school." '^ The price of board was arranged to be four shillings per week for children under fourteen, and " four and six for those above." The hoped-for funds for this important venture did not materialize, and in 1788 the school came to a speedy close of its career.^ Friends came into collision at so many points with the Churches of what they call the " Presbyterian system " that there was little opportunity for them in colonial days to co-operate with their Christian neighbours in New England in moral and philanthropic undertakings. The result was that they felt themselves forced to discover their own peculiar moral activities and their own humani- tarian efforts. Quite naturally, at first they were specially absorbed in the work of winning their own emancipation from what appeared to them the tyranny of those who made laws for them, but as fast as they won their freedom they took up the fight on behalf of other peoples who were oppressed and hampered, and they proved to be good leaders of what seemed at the time "lost causes" and " forlorn hopes." Their primary concern, as I have already implied, was the formation of a " peculiar people." This aim, to my mind, always hampered them, limited their scope, and narrowed their field of public usefulness, but as I am endeavouring to give a faithful historical picture, I must dwell for a little, in concluding this chapter, upon their zealous labours to construct their own " beloved Zion." They were the bearers of a religious message which in ' This extravagant fee was soon dropped to fifty pounds ! ^ Through the persistent efforts of Moses Brown of Providence, one of the iiiain creators of this Portsmouth school, and by the assistance of his generous gift, the school was revived in 1819, located at Providence, and has had a famous history and has rendered great service to the cause of education. 1 68 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i essence and idea contained much that was permanent and universal. They showed a real genius for feeling out the great elemental truths of Christianity and for avoiding the scholastic formulations which were doomed, sooner or later, to have "mene" written on them. While others were still speculating over the " decrees " and " schemes " of a divine Sovereign, they were living in a joyous consciousness of a divine Father who was, and is, and will be the inward Spirit and Life and Light of all who strive and aspire. They no doubt often talked about their conception of God in narrow and somewhat for- bidding terminology, but wherever one comes upon their great central idea, adequately expressed, in epistle, sermon, or autobiographical journal, he finds a glimpse, at least, of an ever new yet ever old truth, that God is immanent, self-revealing, and eternally redeeming the race, and working His Life into the lives of men.-' But the moment one leaves this central doctrine and turns to the efforts which were made to maintain peculiarities, the " genius " appears lacking, and the movement seems to be caught in a back-wash. There was, no doubt, a real call in the middle decades of the seventeenth century for a vigorous and uncompromising campaign against sham and hollowness, and for a protest against fashions and forms of etiquette which were a burden to the life, and which buried the person under a rubbish of meaningless mannerisms. The Quaker uttered that protest with a commendable fearlessness, and he had a straightforward way of calling things by their plain names and of bringing the naked truth to the front. That was good service; and so, too, was his steady insistence on human equality and the potential nobility of every man. ' Here are two sample passages from epistles which were read in all their meetings: "Be careful and labor in the peaceable gospel, to settle, stay, and establish peoples' minds in the holy principle of Life and Light . . . and where there is the least tudding or breaking forth of Life let it be nourished and encouraged." — London Epistle of 1672. "And now, dear friends, who profess and possess that which is above all religions, ways, and worships in the world, our desire is that you may outstrip and exceed the world in virtue, in purity, in chastity, in godliness, and in holiness ; and in modesty, civility, and in righteous- ness and love, so that your sober life may appear to all and may answer that of God in all." — Epistle qf George Fox to New England Friends in 1684. cH. VII NEW TYPE OF SOCIAL RELIGION 169 But it is an unmistakable fact that the principle soon fell to a subconscious level, and the " testimonies," which probably had their origin in vitality, as a graphic method of uttering human principle, became an end in themselves and were finally cherished as the badges of a peculiar people. The use of "thee" and "thou" was initiated from a sincere desire to emphasize the equality of men, for the plural " you " was used only in addressing persons of dignity and standing ; but the use of " you " rapidly became universal custom, and whatever principle may have attached to " thou " disappeared, and the New England Quaker of the eighteenth century could give no reason for this peculiar language. The hat " testimony " came to be even more devoid of significance and rationality. There may have been some point once in keeping covered because of a desire not " to give to men an honour which belonged to God," but the custom of wearing the hat before magistrates and in religious assemblies soon became only a " custom." It ceased to have an inner meaning, and it proclaimed no important truth, as one realises at once when he reads the explanations which were given for it. When we remember that almost nothing cost so much in suffering as did this refusal to " uncover " we can only wish the life had been staked on a greater ' issue.^ The refusal to take an oath was in a higher region of principle — the determination that there should be but one standard of truth-telling. But the significance of even this testimony was much blurred by the failure to exhibit its living import and by the tendency to treat it as a " com- mand." It was, again, a great drop when the Quaker passed from his primitive call to simplicity of life and freedom from the yoke of fashion, and took the dangerously easy method of adopting a garb, which soon came to be ^ It is evident that the Quaker converts in New England at once adopted this badge. Humphrey Norton gives us this interesting passage about the case of William Shattuck of Boston, who is here speaking for himself : ' ' After I was convinced by the Light of the Lord in me I was brought to their court, and entering with my hat on, John Endicott looking on me with great disdain said, Art thou come to this?"^£nj;]f«, p. 65. I70 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i another peculiar badge and a mark of "spirituality."^ These things have, no doubt, been often defended, and they were pursued in unmistakable sincerity ; but they plainly drew attention away from the real spiritual message, they quickly became ends-in-themselves, and as they rose in importance, the propagation of spiritual religion as a way of living for all men as men declined. One reads to-day with melancholy and a sense of sadness, of the vast labour and pains which these good people bestowed, on these " fences," and one wishes that the same zeal had been bestowed in expanding their central living truth of an indwelling and Emmanuel God who is un- )Veariedly at work making a divine kingdom out of men like us ! But while we speak with regret of the excessive activity directed to the cultivation of customs, in their very nature bound to arrest spiritual development, we can review with enthusiasm the persistent efforts which these same people made to emancipate the minds and bodies of their fellow-men in New England and elsewhere, and one is profoundly impressed with the conviction, as he goes through their journals and epistles, that they had dis- covered the supreme secret — how to find God and enjoy Him in the pathway of this our earthly life. ^ The importance of these badges appears in very early documents. An Epistle of 1697 says : *' Friends everywhere, keep to plainness in speech, habit, and dealing, and keep to our testimony in calling the months and days by Scripture names and not by heathen." CHAPTER VIII NEW ENGLAND QUAKERS IN POLITICS The first opportunity for a Quaker experiment in govern- ment came to the Friends in Rhode Island, where for more than a hundred years, with temporary fluctuations of their influence, they had an important share in the direction of the affairs of the colony. The Colony of Rhode Island was founded, as we have seen, by a group of men who came into sharp collision with the religious system of the Puritan Colony of Massachusetts. Some of them were compulsory exiles, and some of them were voluntary exiles, from the mother Colony of Massachusetts, because they were highly resolved to be free themselves and to set other men's souls free from all ecclesiastical tyranny.^ The leading persons in the group — Coddington, Coggeshall, Easton, the Clarkes, Hutchinsons, Dyers, and Bulls — had already arrived at a type of religion in many respects like that of the Quakers, and those who joined themselves to that movement, just beyond the middle of the seven- teenth century, adopted the new name with hardly a change of idea, ideal, or practice. Coddington (b. 1601, d. 1678) was the foremost man of the group.' He was ' The history of this controversy is told in Chapter I. ^ In the Preface of his Demonstration of True Love, written ' ' To the Rulers of the Colony of Massachusetts " in 1672, Coddington says: "I was entrusted in the first settling [of the Massachusetts Bay Colony] and with the chiefest in all public charges \i.e. affairs] even before Boston was named or any house therein. I builded the first good house, in which the governor now dwells. I having spent much of my estate and prime of ray age in propagating Plantations, and now come to the last period, the seventieth year of my age ; in discharge of my conscience toward God and in tender love and due respect to all, I write, as I have done, to warn you of your general calamity, upon which I parted from you, that persecuting spirit let loose ; and I rest yours in love, W. C. " 171 172 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i judge of the Portsmouth Colony until Newport was founded, and then he was chosen judge of that Colony. When the two Colonies of Portsmouth and Newport were united under one government he was successively chosen Governor from 1640 to 1647. When the four Colonies of Providence, Newport, Portsmouth, and Warwick were united in one government under the charter of 1647, John Coggeshall was chosen first President. William Coddington was, however, elected to this office in 1648, but was afterwards suspended from office, apparently because of his over^zealous efforts to bring the Colony into the New England Confederacy, which he felt was the necessary step for the fulfilment of the larger destiny of the Colony on the Narragansett. Soon after this he went to England with large designs in his mind. He was nursing the dream of a great island Colony in Narragansett Bay, and his two attempts — in 1 644 and 1 648 — to bring the Colony into the New England Confederacy had been with the aim to safeguard and strengthen the infant state. These attempts had failed. He now embarked for England with a still bolder dream in his mind, to make the Narragansett islands play the r61e in America which the British islands had played in the old world ! He assiduously cultivated the friendship of Sir Harry Vane, formerly his friend in the days of Vane's governorship, dining frequently with him ; seeking also the assistance of his old theological opponent Hugh Peters, now a man of large influence. Finally, in spite of the opposition of Edward Winslow of Plymouth, Coddington secured, through the British Council of State and the Committee of Admiralty, a patent, signed April 1651 by Lord President Bradshaw, making him proprietor of the islands " Aquidnet " [otherwise Rhode Island] and " Quinunagate " [otherwise Conanicut] and Governor for life. This act of Coddington's was, to say the least, a rash act, a profound blunder, and the colonists of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations denied his authority and sent John Clarke, a man of great parts, a genuine apostle of soul liberty and a wise diplomatist, to England to get the cH. viii THE QUAKERS IN POLITICS 173 Coddington charter annulled.^ In 1656 Coddington, in honourable and manly fashion, retreated from his mis- taken course. He was never a traitor, as Turner assumes,^ and wrote a letter engaging to submit "with all his heart " to the lawful authority in the Colony, he having already in 1652 signed a paper surrendering all claim to anything more than his own share of the island of Aquidneck.* From this time to his death he was prominent in the affairs of the Colony, and, as we shall see, steadily received the mark of public confidence, and was raised to the highest office in the gift of the people. Weeden, in his valuable volume,* declares that Coddington was " a man of substance materially and mentally. Judge Durfee considers that the well-organised judiciary of the island betokens the presence of some man having not only a large legal and legislative capacity, but also a commanding influence. It was probably Coddington. It is more than doubtful whether Rhode Island could have attained a stable government without Coddington's effort." Nicholas Easton (b. 1592, d. 1675) built the first house in Newport. He was one of the nineteen signers of the Aquidneck Colonial " Contract," and his is the second name on the " Agreement " of the Newport Colony. He and John Clarke were appointed in 1639 to correspond with Sir Harry Vane upon the state of affairs in the new Colony. He was elected " Assistant " from 1640 to 1644. He was President of the Colony in 1650, 165 I, and 1654, and he was thus prepared for the larger services to which he was called in his distinctly Quaker period. Sometime between 1657 and 1660 — the evidence seems to point to the former date as the time — Coddington, Nicholas Easton, John Easton, Joshua ' Roger Williams went with Clarke as representative of the mainland towns. ' See article by Henry E. Turner, hostile to Coddington, in Rhode Island Tracts, No. 4. ' See Colony Records of Rhode Island, i. 327. He was that year elected a commissioner to the General Court, which would not have happened if the people of Newport had not believed in his integrity. ^ Weeden's Early Rhode Island (N.Y. , 1910), p. 64. 174 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i Coggeshall (son of John who had died in ofifice in 1647), Walter Clarke, Caleb Carr, and many other leading citizens of the island-colony, joined the Quaker movement with their families, and at once gave the persecuted people the support of their names and their influence. It is interesting to note that their affiliation with the religious movement, so unpopular everywhere else, had from the first no detrimental effect upon the political career of the men who joined the Quaker meeting at Newport. Nicholas Easton and his son John Easton were both elected commissioners to the General Court of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations in 1660, and Nicholas was chosen Moderator of the Court that year, and John was made Attorney-General, a position to which he was many times elected until 1674, when he was raised to a higher office. The following year, 1661, Caleb Carr was elected Treasurer-General of the Colony, and he likewise continued to hold a prominent place in the affairs of the Colony until he was finally chosen Governor in 1695. Nicholas Easton was the first Quaker to be raised to the governorship of the Colony, he having been already five times Deputy-Governor, beginning with the year 1 666.'' His term of office as Governor extended from 1672 to 1674. It was his lot, as it was also that of the later Quaker Governors, to come into public prominence at the critical time of war. This period, from 1666 to 1674, when Easton was almost continuously in public office, was disturbed by two wars between England and Holland, and the Colonies which were within easy reach of the Dutch in New Amsterdam were continually harassed with anxiety, even though not actually involved in border warfare. The first Dutch war of Charles II.'s reign began in 1664, and was ended by the Peace of Breda in 1667. The second war began in 1672 and was ter- minated in 1674, permanently settling New York as English territory. The wars between the mother-country and the continental nations were complicated by alliances 1 The Great Charter of Rhode Island, secured from King Charles the Second, had gone into operation in 1663. cH. vm THE QUAKERS IN POLITICS 175 of Indian tribes against the English colonists, and the Rhode Island Quaker officials must many times have had their consciences severely tested in these periods when preparation for war was forced upon them. Left to them- selves the Rhode Island colonists could have maintained peace, for their Indian policy was wise, humane, and enlightened, and gained for them the confidence and love of their Indian neighbours/ But they were a tiny part of a larger political system. They could not live unto themselves. They received their Charter from the English Government, and they were of necessity involved in the schemes and quarrels of the mother-country as well as in the expanding movements of the Colonies surrounding them, and, try as they might to keep their domain in peace, they found themselves dragged into the grinding millstones of war. The Quaker officials in the Rhode Island Colony were in every instance devoted to the maintenance of peace. They exerted themselves to the utmost to keep the Colony out of actual war ; but they seem to have settled it as their policy to stay in office, when they were put there by the people, even though they found themselves compelled, by unavoidable conditions and circumstances, to perform public acts of a warlike nature. When they found that the great current of events could not be forced to take the course which in their vision seemed the ideal one, they faced the stubborn conditions that existed and did the best they could with them. They discovered, what all practical workers discover, that the achievement of great ends and high ideals can be won only by slow stages and by graceful bends around obstacles which are for the moment immovable. There has always been in the Society of Friends a group of persons pledged unswervingly to the ideal. To those who form this inner group compromise is under no circumstance allowable. ' One of the significant acts of Nicliolas Easton's administration as Governor was the order that one-half of the jury which was to try an Indian for murder should be composed of Indians, and that Indian testimony should be received on the same basis as the testimony of Englishmen. See Arnold's History of Rhode Island, i. 367. 176 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i If there comes a collision between allegiance to the ideal and the holding of public office, then the office must be deserted. If obedience to the soul's vision involves eye or hand, houses or lands or life, they must be immediately surrendered. But there has always been as well another group who have held it to be equally imperative to work out their principles of life in the complex affairs of the community and the State, where to gain an end one must yield something ; where to get on one must submit to existing conditions ; and where to achieve ultimate triumph one must risk his ideals to the tender mercies of a world not yet ripe for them. John Woolman, the consummate ilower of American Quakerism in the eighteenth century, is the shining type of the former principle, and the Rhode Island governors are good types of the other course. Nicholas Easton was the first to face this hard issue of war, and his policy, distinctly at variance with that later pursued by the Pennsylvania Quakers, was followed by all the Quaker governors of Rhode Island. By act of the General Court the 13th of May 1667, he was appointed chairman of a committee to make a rate for the levying of ;^ 150 for the defence of Newport against a common enemy, and for " mounting the great gun," " in order tq prevent such mischiefs and miseries as may happen for the want of the same." ^ It appears from the Records that the Quaker Deputy-Governor did not help to " mount the great gun," as it was mounted by the military men of the Colony.'' Just before Nicholas Easton was raised to the governor- ship the Colony was believed to be in imminent danger of aggressive attack, as the following record of the General Court shows : "August 31, 1671. — There being a great necessity to put the Colony in a posture of defence att this time, wherein there are see apparent grounds to expect some treacherous designes and ' Colony Records of Shade Island, ii. 197. Daniel Gould, John Gould, aid Peter Easton, all Friends, were on this committee. » Ibid. CH. vin THE QUAKERS IN POLITICS 177 practices from the Indians, itt is therefore ordered, that the Towne Councills and Councills of Warr, of each respective towne on the Island, shall meete at Mr. Geo. Lawton's dwelling-house in the bounds of Portsmouth, on Tuesday, the fifth day of September, now next insueing, at nine of the clock in the fore- noon, then and there to consider of some wayes and means for secureing the inhabitants and their estates in these times of imminent danger." 1 That was surely a difficult time for the infant state, and it was a hard crisis for the beginning of a Quaker administration. The new " administration " was, however, prevailingly Quaker. Nicholas Easton was Governor, John Cranston, Deputy-Governor,^ John Easton, son of Nicholas, was Attorney-General, and Joshua Coggeshall, John Easton, and Peter Easton were assistants. One of the first acts of the Council under this Quaker administra- tion looked toward preparation for the military defence of the Colony, though here again we have no way of knowing what part, active or passive, the Quaker members actually took. The Act reads : " Whereas, wee have received speciall order from his Majestic for the Proclamation of Warr against the Dutch, and the puttinge this Collony into a posture of defence, this Councill doe recom- mend and doe order and empower the Magistrates, together with the Captain, Lieutenant, and Ensigne of the respective townes, or the major part of them, to take care, order, and putt the inhabitants of each towne into the best posture of defence may be, for the maintaininge the King's interest in this Collony ; and to that end, to act and order to the best of their discretion, until the Generall Assembly or Councill take further order ; and especially to take care for powder, shott, and ammunition, and to inquire after and secure what may be found in the Collony." ^ At the election of 1673, when the war was at its height, when the Colony was in feverish anxiety, and when the coolest heads were needed in counsel, Easton was again elected Governor, William Coddington was chosen Deputy-Governor, and Walter Clarke, one of the foremost Colony Records of Rhode Island, ii. 409. '^ John Cranston was not a Friend in membership though he attended the Vearly Meeting in 1672. See Yo-^s Journal (edition 1901) ii, 168. ' Colony Records of Rhode Island, ii. 463. N 178 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i members of the Newport meeting, was added to the list of assistants. The Dutch succeeded in recapturing New York on the 30th of July 1673, and this caused much commotion in Newport. A special session of the General Assembly was called to provide for the defence of the Colony, and many military measures were passed. The following Act would certainly put a peace-loving Quaker in a hard dilemma : "Voted, forasmuch as there seemeth a present danger by reason of the Dutch forces, whoe the 30th of July last tooke New Yorke, and may unhappily assault and fall upon us, as a ready provision and fittings against such said danger : "It is enacted, that authority is given to the Governor, and in his absence to the Deputy-Governor, and major part of the assistants, for the time beinge (at any time when the Generall Assembly is not sittinge), to nominate, appoint, and constitute such and soe many commanders, and military officers as to them shall seeme requisite for the leadinge, conductinge, and trayninge up the inhabitants of the said Plantation in martiall affaires." And it was further enacted : "that the Governor or, in his absence, the Deputy-Governor, [both Quakers] and all the Assistants on this Island, if the Dutch or any other public enemy shall, in open hostility against the King, assault it or fall upon his subjects here ; then all of them, if able and in health, shall in all time of danger be with or as neere as may be convenient to the eldest Captaine in chiefe [John Cranston] to give to him speciall and perticular directions as the danger shall then occasion, for the safety of the whole ; and the Governor, or Deputy-Governor, and all the Assistants on the Island that shall be able, shall with the first information, allarm, or knowledge of the approach or invasion of the said enemy come together and be ready in the most convenient place to consult and agree how for the best safety and best loyalty to answer any summons such said enemy may send to them." ^ The Assembly thereupon proceeded to draft a pension law for the " reliefe of souldiers that lose their limbs and the reliefe for the relations whose dependency was on 1 Colony Records of Rhode Island, ii. 489. cH. viii THE QUAKERS IN POLITICS 179 such as are slayne " — one of the earliest American pension laws. In the next Act the hand of the Quakers is plainly- seen. They had been unable to stop the occasion of the present war, and they were powerless to prevent the war- like preparations for the defence of those who believed in the propriety of war, but they now made full provision for the relief of tender consciences. This Act of exemp- tion from military duties for conscience' sake, passed the 13th of August 1673 — the first Act of the sort ever passed in America, — is a very curious and quaint document full of odd Scripture texts and allusions, but it is too long to be given in full. The Act declares that " the inhabitants of this colony have a conscience " against requiring taking an oath, " how much more," it adds, " ought such men forbear to compel their equal neighbors against their consciences to trayne to fight and to kill." " Bee it therefore enacted, and hereby it is enacted by his Majesty's authority, that noe person (within this CoUony), that is or hereafter shall be persuaded in his conscience that he cannot or ought not to trayne, to learne to fight, nor to war, nor kill any person or persons, shall at any time be compelled against his judgment and conscience to trayne, arm, or fight, to kill any person or persons by reason of or at the command of any officer of this CoUony, civil nor military, nor by reason of any by-law here past or formerly enacted ; nor shall suffer any punishment, fine, distraint, pennalty, nor imprisonment, who cannot in con- science traine, fight, nor kill any person nor persons for the aforesaid reasons."^ At the next general election William Coddington was chosen Governor, and John Easton Deputy- Governor, while Peter Easton filled both offices of Attorney-General and Colonial Treasurer. Shortly before his election to the governorship Coddington had built himself a great house in Marlborough Street. It was spacious and adapted for the entertainment of many visitors. In the great room of this house the Quaker meeting of Newport was held for many years, and at the time of George Fox's visit the Yearly Meeting was held there, and in this house ^ This Act is in the Rhode Island Colony Records, ii. 495-499. i8o QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES ek. i Coddington entertained the Governor of Massachusetts, Richard Bellingham, on his memorable visit to Rhode Island.'^ Soon after the election which freed him from the responsibility of public office, Nicholas Easton passed away full of years and having achieved the highest honours his Colony had to bestow. He had helped form the infant settlement in Newbury, Massachusetts ; he had built the first English house in Hampton ; he had bravely followed his light in the trying days which parted the Puritan colony into two religious groups, and he had been in the front line of the pioneers of religious freedom on Rhode Island. He had built the first house in Newport, the first windmill on the island ; and he had been among the first to throw in his lot with the new-born Quaker Society. He had been the constant companion of George Fox in his two months of labour in New England, and he had finished the course of an eventful life by piloting his Colony through two administrations complicated by the problems of imminent war. During Easton's period of public service the Colony was swept by a cyclonic disturbance of internal contention. The colonial records describe it as " an uncomfortable difference of which there seemed to be no peaceable composure " ; as " dangerous contests, distractions, and divisions among our ancient, loving, and honoured neigh- bours, the freemen of the town of Providence, by which the town is in an incapacity of transacting its own affairs," making " a breech in the whole." ^ This bitter quarrel had broken out over William Harris' claim of ownership to extensive lands stretching up the Pawtuxet River and other streams. Harris was a strenuous man of affairs, " pertinacious in temperament," and inclined to be a local storm-centre. His opponents, in the pamphleteering manner of the times, called him "a fire-brand," "a salamander always delighting to live in ye fire of con- 1 ' ' Did I not entertain Richard Bellingliam and his company nine or ten days in my house on Rhode Island ? " — A Demonstration of True Love, p. 15. The first Friends' Meeting-House in Newport was already built in 1672, i)ut many of the meetings were still held in Coddington's house. Stephen Gould, who saw this house torn down, has left a very interesting sketch of its history. ' Rhode Island Colony Records, ii. 289-293. cH. vm THE QUAKERS IN POLITICS i8i tention," "a raging sea casting forth mire and dirt!"^ He, in turn, called them — the Roger Williams faction and the Fenner party — "the makers of poysonous plaisters against our rights in lands and laws." So fierce was the storm that a special session of the General Assembly was called, and two Newport Quakers, John Easton and Joshua Coggeshall, were " chosen and author- ised " to call a Providence town meeting in the name of the General Assembly, superintend the choice of officers, and bring civil order out of the chaos— a delicate and difficult task which was in the end successfully carried through.^ As Coddington began his administration news came to the Colony that peace was established between England and Holland, and the strain and anxiety of war seemed happily over. One disturbance disquieted the Colony. There were visible signs that Rhode Island was to have difficulty in establishing its rightful claim to the Narra- gansett country on the west shore of the Bay— a region for many years in hot dispute. One of the new Governor's first acts was to proceed with his council to the district in dispute and to establish there the township of Kingstown (now called Kingston), which was incorporated by the General Assembly as the seventh town of Rhode Island. After one peaceful term of office William Coddington was re-elected, but the days of peace and calm were over, and his second term of office was destined to see the fiercest storm of Indian war which the New England Colonies ever experienced — the contest known in history as " King Philip's War." This war was the natural outcome of the irresistible collision of two races, two civilisations, incompatible with each other. The collision came at this particular crisis because the Indian cause just then happened to be embodied in a great natural leader of men in the person of the Indian chief, King Philip, son of Massasoit. Philip Rhode Island Historical Society Collection, x. 78. ^ Lott Strange and Joseph Torrey were added to the committee of two ' ' for Counsel and Advice," Records, ii. 293. Harris himself became a Quaker after George Fox's visit to the Colony. 1 82 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i believed that he had been greatly wronged by the English, especially those of Plymouth Colony, and he saw no hope of gaining the old time rights, privileges, and conditions of Indian life, except by a master stroke at the life of the English settlers. It was always the Quaker way to endeavour to prevent war by removing the occasion for it, and the Quakers in authority at this crisis made a vigorous trial of their method. As the sky was darkening with ominous clouds of war, five men, with John Easton, the Deputy-Governor of the Colony of Rhode Island, at their head, rowed up to King Philip's headquarters at Mount Hope — a pro- montory jutting into Narragansett Bay — to try counsel and persuasion with him in order to bring about, if possible, an arbitration of the difficulties. The five visitors all came to the council unarmed, and Philip laid aside his weapons for the occasion, though his warriors, about forty in number, were armed ; and Easton, who wrote the only account of this famous conference, says : " We sat veri friendly together. We told him our bisness was to indever that they [the Indians] might not receve or do rong." ^ " We told them," the narrative continues, " that our desire was that the quarrel might be rightly decided in the best way, not as dogs decide their quarrels." The Indians " owned that fighting was the worst way, but they inquired how right might take place without fighting. We said by arbitration. They said that by arbitration the English agreed against them, and so by arbitration they had much rong." ^ " We said they might chuse a Indian King and the English might chuse the Governor of New Yorke, that neither had case to say that either wear parties to the difference. They said they had not heard of this way. We were persuaded that if this way had been tendered they would have accepted." Philip then proceeded to spread before them a long list of Indian grievances. Philip said : " Their King's father [Massasoit], when the English first came, was a ^ Easton's Narrative (Hough edition), p. 7. This narrative is a marvellous specimen of seventeenth-century spelling ! ^ Ibid. p. 8. 3 Ibid. p. 10. CH. VIII THE QUAKERS IN POLITICS 183 great man and the English as a littill child. He con- strained the other Indians from ronging the English, and gave them corn and shewed them how to plant it and was free to do them ani good." " But their King's brother [Alexander], when he was King came miserably to dy, being forced to court, and as they judged poysoned." "Another Greavance was, if 20 of their onest Indiands testified that a Englishman had dun them rong it was nothing, but if one of their worst Indians testified against any Indian, or their King, when it pleased the English, it was suficiant." Finally Philip complained that the English were " eager to sell the Indians lickers [liquors] that most Indians spent all in drynknes and then raved upon the sober Indians ! " ^ The visitors pleaded all day for arbitration, but there seemed no practical way of bringing it about, for the five counsellors were incapable of convincing the Indians that they could bring the other Colonies to their peaceful view, and Easton concludes his Narrative, written while the war was in progress, with the sectarian remark : " I am persuaded of New England Prists [ministers] they are so blinded by the spirit of Persecution and [so eager] to maintain their hyer [hire] that they have been the case [cause] that the law of Nations and the Law of Arems have been violated in this War [war was begun without any formal declaration]. The war would not have been if ther had not bine hyerlings." ^ Upon the very heels of this conference the storm broke with fury upon the inhabitants who lived along the shores of the bay.^ The Quakers of Rhode Island held the view throughout the conflict that it was an unnecessary war, and might have been avoided if the other Colonies had shown Philip fair treatment, but in any case the innocent were involved with those who were responsible for the calamity, and the mainland of Rhode Island came ' Easton's Narrative (Hough edition), pp. 12, 13. ^ Ibid. pp. 30, 31. ' King Philip's war began 24th June 1675, the Easton Conference occurred t7'h June. The Narragansett Indians were most kindly disposed toward the Friends on the Island. The Indian chief Pessicus told the Newport magistrates that his heart was affected and sorrowed for the English, but ' ' he could not rule \i.e. overrule] the young Indians nor persuade the other chiefs." i84 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i in for a heavy share of the suffering. It was the Quaker policy to make the Island a safe city of refuge, and to bring the outlying inhabitants thither.'^ Providence and Warwick sent urgent appeals for military assistance, and the General Assembly of 1676 answered them through a committee of six, of which the Quakers, Walter Clarke, Joshua Coggeshall, and Caleb Carr were members, as follows : " After searious debate and well weighings of your hazardous and present condition, wee declare that wee finde this Collony is not of ability to maintaine sufficient garrisons for the security of our out-Plantations. Therefore, we thinke and judge it most safe for the inhabitants to repaire to this Island, which is the most secureist. Newport and Portsmouth inhabitants have taken such care that those of the Collony that come, and cannot procure land to plant for themselves and families, reliefe may be supplied with land by the townes ; and each family soe wantinge a libertye, shall have a cow kept upon the commons ; butt if any of you think yourselves of abillity to keepe your interest of houses and cattell, and will adventure your lives [by staying where you are] we shall not positively oppose you therein ; but this the Assembly declares as their sense and reall beliefe con- cerninge the premises, that those that soe doth make themselves a prey, and what they have as goods, provisions, ammunition, cattell, etc., will be a reliefe to the enemy at their pleasure, except more than ordinary Providence prevent, therefore we cannot but judge them wisest that take the safest course to secure themselves, and take the occasion from the enemy." ^ There exists a very odd letter, signed by Walter Clarke, written 28th January 1676, which further indicates the Quaker policy. It is in answer to an appeal for assistance from Providence. Clarke endeavours to quiet " the discontent of spirit " which prevailed in Providence toward the Newport authorities, " as if they were not worthy to live," by explaining that " the weal of the Colony" would have been attended to if the weather ' Drake's Old Indian Chronicle says, "Rhode Island now became the common Zoar, or place of refuge for the distressed," p. 224. A minute of the executive council of New York of this date says that ' ' Great Numbers of the people flockt to Rhode Island from their habitations destroyed, insomuch that the inhabitants [of the island] are very much straitened by their numbers, and will quickly want provisions. " ' Colony Records of Rhode Island, ii. 532-535. CH. vm THE QUAKERS IN POLITICS 185 had not " obstructed " the execution of orders for defence. He further offers the explanation, certainly not very- satisfactory to the sufferers, that if the " Administration " had furnished soldiers to protect " the out-inhabitants " and their property, the people would have been " damnified by the charge for wages, ammunition, and diet ! " " The island," he says, " has expended eight hundred pounds to provide for the security and provision of those who are there ; and all who cannot be secure where they are " had best be transported hither," " for we are not of ability to keep soldiers under pay." " Sorrows are to increase," he thinks, and to have soldiers to pay and care for would only add to the troubles of the already heavy times. He warns them not to appeal for help to the other Colonies, for they will in the end " make a prey of you " — there was apparently no help left for the suffering "out- inhabitants," but to wait for the salvation of the Lord ! This curious sentence was perhaps meant to be a comfort : "I have done to the uttermost of my ability for your good and shall do, yet we know the Lord's hand is against New England [evidently Massachusetts and Plymouth] and no weapon formed will prosper till the work be finislied, and the wheat [the Rhode Island saints !] must be pulled up with the tears [tares] and the innocent suffer with the guilty ! " ^ On the 1 2th of April the same year, Walter Clarke wrote again, in a somewhat more encouraging vein, with less religious comment and with more practical direction : " Only this for your present encouragement : we well approve your advice and willingness to maintain a garrison, and have agreed to bear the charge of ten men upon the Colony's account, till the succeeding authority take further order,^ and that you may take four of our men to strengthen you, or if it be wholly by yourselves, we, as abovesaid, will bear the charge of ten of them, and after the election, if those concerned see cause, and the Colony be of ability to do it, I shall not obstruct, if it be continued all the year. Be pleased to dispatch our ketch.* I ' Clarke's letter is printed in Staples' Annals, p. 167. ^ General election was about to occur, at which the writer of the letter, Walter Clarke, was elected Governor. ' A "ketch" was a strong two-masted vessel, generally carrying guns. 1 86 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i have no more to you but my kind love and desire of your peace and safety as my own. Walter Clarke. ^ A carefully planned attack was made on the Indians by the colonial forces at South Kingston, near Tower Hill, in the winter of 1675. It was a fierce engagement, 68 of the English being killed and 150 wounded. The wounded were brought across to the Island, where they were kindly cared for. Drake's Old Indian Chronicle says that " Governor William Coddington received the wounded soldiers kindly, though some churlish Quakers were not free to entertain them until compelled by the Governor.^ Coddington at this time wrote a letter to the Governor and Council of Massachusetts in a Postscript to which he contrasts the way the Quakers have treated the suffering soldiers of Massachusetts with the way the people of Boston have treated, and are treating, the Quakers there. The letter itself is very laconic : "The Governor and Councell of ye Massachusetts and Committee of ye United Colonies writing to us do give us thanks for transporting their soldiers and Provisions, and that sloops transported their wounded, and desired us to lett out 100 or 200 Souldiers, we answered you denying soe to do and gave you our Grounds." The Postscript, for which the letter was evidently written, deals with a contemporary Boston proclamation for a day of humiliation, in which proclamation was given a list of Puritan " sins " that had brought this war upon the nation as a judgment. The curious catalogue of sins included : neglect to catechise the young, excess in apparel, wearing of long hair, rudeness in worship, such as, for example, the practice of leaving the church before divine service had ended, and the recent neglect to suppress the Quakers and their meetings. To show that the proclamation was no empty call to repentance, a law was simultaneously passed imposing a fine of five pounds ^ Staples' Annals, p. 167. ^ Old Indian Chronicle (Boston edition, 1867), p. 211. These Quakers believed the war thoroughly unjust, and desired to withhold from all acts which might seem like taking part in the war, though in declining to nurse wounded soldiers they were surely pushing their scruples too far. cH. VIII THE QUAKERS IN POLITICS 187 upon every person who should attend a Quaker meeting, with imprisonment at hard labour upon bread and water.^ Of this proclamation and law Governor Coddington, with grim humour, writes in his Postscript : " There is come to our Hands certain Lawes or Orders of ye 3rd November 1675 set forth by ye authority of your generall Assembly of ye Massachusetts, your secretaries Hand being to them, wherein you say you have apostated from the Lord with a great backsliding : To which I do consent ; so great [as] hardly to be paralleled, all things considered. We were a people prfessing ye Feare of ye Lord in England against Bishops and Ceremonies in tender Love to all that prfessed Godliness, and so departed from the land of our Nativity, declaring the Ground of our Removall into N.E. viz. to seek out a Place for our Brethren where we might enjoy the Liberty of our consciences that ye sons of wickedness might vex us no more. " How well this hath bin performed by you, let your printed Lawes declare and this amongst the Rest : Our houses are open to receive your wounded and all in distress, we have prpared a Hospitall for yours, but you a House of Correction for all that repaire to our Meetings. Your ministers with us have not been molested, ours with you have been persecuted. Is this a time for you to establish Iniquity by a Law — will not the Lord be avenged on such a Nation as this that sets up Ministers that are not made Ministers by ye power of an endless Life, but of ye Letter that kills, and not ye spirit that gives Life, and a Worship that is not in Spirit and Truth set [up] by Christ above 1600 yeares agoe; we cannot come to you without departing from ye Lord as you have done, therefore desiring your return to ye Power that made you, ye true Light that is in you. This is written by one who above 45 yeares past was one of you and now is one that desires your true Good both Eternall and temporall, as I did when I was with you and am yours in Love.— W. C." 2 As a result of the great suffering occasioned through- out the Colony of Rhode Island by the progress of the ' Colony Records of Massachusetts, v. 59. ^ Easton's Narrative, Appendix, pp. 132-135. A still more interesting piece of Coddington correspondence is a letter under date of 22nd December 1675, from Governor Andros of New York, charging the Governor of Rhode Island with having seized powder and arms from a ship bound to the port of New York. There is, unfortunately, no answer extant to this letter, which I give herewith : "Hon. Sir, — This is by a sloop bound to yor parts not to omitt noe good oppor- tunity, though there bee nothing new, but that I heare that you stopped a vessel bound to this place, on ace. of some Powder and Amies in her, which (as re- 1 88 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i war — both Warwick and Providence were burned to the ground — the General Assembly, at its meeting in April 1676, roused itself to military preparation in response to the urgent calls of the non-insular inhabitants. It was voted that "there appears absolute necessity for the defence and safety of this Colony," and that "for the orderly mannagings of the millitia this Assembly doe agree to chose a major to be chiefe Captaine of all the Collony forces." John Cranston was chosen to be the major, with commission to use his " utmost endeavor to kill, expulse, expell, take and destroy all and every the enemies of this his majesty's collony," which commission is signed by Governor Coddington.^ The Assembly thereupon sent John Easton and George Lawton, both Quakers, " with all convenient speed," to Providence with full power " to determine whether a garrison or garrisons shall be kept there at the charge of the Colony and the place or places where they shall be kept and whether at all." They decided on one garrison with seven men and a commander.^ At the summer election of 1676, Walter Clarke, in spite of his somewhat halting " Quaker war-policy," was chosen Governor, though major John Cranston was associated with him, as Deputy-Governor, to take charge of military affairs.' The Colony was in a sorry plight when the new administration began. The war was presented) would not only reflect on mee and the magistrates of this government but on his Royall Highnesse and the King himself whose commissions I have. I cannot give creditt to this report, not having heard from yorselfe or colony of it, which I am confident I should, yet being told mee by sufficient men I pray I may, etc. — E. Andkoss. " Easton's JVarra/ive, pp. 130-131. ' See Colony Records, ii. S37-539. 2 Colony Records, ii. 545. The commander was Captain Fenner, and his commission was signed by Walter Clarke, the next Quaker Governor. ^ William Edmundson, who visited Newport at this time, says : '* Great troubles attended Friends by Reason of the war, which lay very heavy on places belong- ing to that Quarter without the Island, the Indians killing and biuning all before them ; and the People who were not Friends were outrageous to fight ; but the Governor being a Friend (one Walter Clarke) could not give commissions to kill and destroy men." — Edmundson's Journal (ed. 1715), p. 82. At the end of the war the Magistrates of Plymouth wrote to the King their opinion of Quaker Governors in war time; "The truth is the authority of Rhode Island being all the time of the warr in the bands of Quakers, they scarcely showed an English spirit, either assisting us, their distressed neighbors, or relieving their own planta- tions upon the Mayne. " — New England Papers, xxxiii. 5. CH. vni THE QUAKERS IN POLITICS 189 brought to an end by the mid-summer of 1676, when Philip was hunted to his death In the swamps by Mount Hope near the scene of Easton's arbitration conference, but the non-insular towns of Rhode Island were almost wiped off the map. Every house but one between Providence and Stonington was destroyed, and most of the territory outside the islands was like a desert.* The new Governor was fortunately relieved from the actual din of war, but he found himself loaded with many problems which the war had left in its wake. One of the problems was the treatment of the defeated Indians. The other Colonies sold their captives as slaves. To Rhode Island belongs the signal honour of having inaugurated a more enlightened policy. An Act of the Assembly was passed that " no Indian in this colony be a slave." Some of the leaders who were captured were brought to Newport, and tried by court-martial and shot. Three Quakers, the Governor, John Easton, and Joshua Coggeshall, were members of the court, but apparently they did not attend the session, owing to their conscientious scruples against capital punish- ment.^ Governor Clarke took the first opportunity of peace to discharge the garrison at Providence, to which he had consented only because of the overwhelming force of popular demand. It was restored, however, by the succeeding Governor, Benedict Arnold, who was a non- Quaker. About this time a plague of some sort, a very deadly epidemic, broke out and ravaged the Island. William Edmundson, the Quaker traveller, has given us our only account of it. He says : ' Drake says that there was only one house left standing in Warwick, three in Providence, and none in Pawtuxet {Old Indian Chronicle, p. 244). The scholarly editor of Callander's Historical Discourse thinks that the sufferings of the Colony and the lack of union in matters of defence ' ' were not owing only to the religious principles of the gentlemen then at the head of our administration." He points out that there are still in existence commissions signed and sealed by the Quaker Governor and the Quaker Deputy-Governor directing Benedict Arnold, jun., "to go in an armed sloop to visit the garrisons at Providence." The Deputy-Governor gave solemn evidence that he was ' ' not against giving com- missions that are for the security of the King's interests in this colony." — Op. cit. note, p. 134. " See Easton's Narrative, pp. 173-190. ,||#X QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i "Whilst I staid at Rhode Island, the heat of the Indian war abated, for King Philip, in that war of the Indians, was killed and his party destroyed and subdued. Presently a sickness came which proved mortal and took many away, few families but lost some, in two or three days' sickness. Many Friends died, yet I constantly visited sick families of Friends, although the smell of the sickness was loathsome, and many times I could feel all the parts of my body as it were loaden with it, so that I would say to sick families, It was much I did not carry their sickness away, I was so loaden therewith. After sometime it seized upon me with such violence that I was forced to keep my bed at Walter Newberry's in New-Port."^ In addition to the problems of restoring the devastated province, now swept also by plague, and the problem of the treatment of the Indians of the Colony, the Governor had to face again the aggressions of Connecticut on the Narragansett territory. Three Rhode Island citizens who were engaged in restoring their desolate homesteads in Narragansett were seized by Connecticut officers and carried prisoners to Hartford. Appeal was made to Governor Clarke, and he and his council wrote immediately, demanding their release, and threatening reprisal if it was refused.^ This affair, however, went over to the new administration, for at the election of 1677 the Quakers went out of office and the war-party triumphed. One of the first acts of the new Assembly was a Militia Bill which struck at the provision for Quaker exemption. This Bill still insisted that there should be " free liberty of conscience for the reall worship of God," but it declared that "Some under pretence of conscience hath taken liberty to act contrary, and make voyde the power, strength, and authority of the millitary soe necessary to be upheld and maintained, that the civill power (in which the whole freedome and priviledges of his Majesty's subjects are kept and preserved) cannot without it be executed, and have soe far acted therein, that this his Majesty's Collony at this time is in effect wholly destitute of the millitary forces for the preservation thereof, and inhabitants 1 Edmundson's Journal, p. 82. ^ Arnold's History of Rhode Island, i. 425. I cH.vni THE QUAKERS IN POLITICS 191 therein, and may thereby be made a prey unto the weakest and meanest of his Majesty's enemys."i The Act proceeds to provide for an efficient militia into which all freemen are subject to draft : "Provided, alwayes, and this Assembly doe hereby declare, that it is their full and unanimous resolution to maintaine a full liberty in religious concernments relateinge to the worship of God, and that noe person in inhabitinge within this jurisdiction shall bee in any wise molested, punished, disquieted, or called in question for any differences of opinion in matters of religion, whoe doe not actually disturbe the civill peace of the Collony." 2 Benedict Arnold, who had served the Colony twelve times as Governor, and who was generally chosen when the Quakers were not in office, died before his term of office expired, and William Coddington, now an old man, was selected to take the vacant place, but he did not live to finish out the term, being on his deathbed when the Assembly met, ist October 1678, and dying two days later — " a good man, full of days," as Callender says, "he died promoting the welfare and the prosperity of the little commonwealth which he had in a manner founded." ' At the time of his death the Island colony, in which he had been the chief figure, was five times as wealthy as the other plantations in Rhode Island,* and was forging ahead with the promise of becoming one of the busiest ports on the American coast, and one of the leading centres of wealth and culture in the new world. The old Governor had done much to make this development possible, and Rhode Island owes him a large debt, even though Judge Durfee's epigram upon him is in some measure true : " He had in him a little too much of the future for Massachusetts, and a little too much of the past for Rhode Island." ^ At the next election, and for five years running, Walter Clarke was chosen Deputy-Governor, and during ' Colony Records, ii. 567. ^ Ibid. p. 571. ' Historical Discourse, p. 52. ^ Weeden's Early Rhode Island, p. 97 ' Judge Durfee's Historical Discourse, p. 16, 192 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i this period John Easton, Caleb Carr, Peter Easton, and Henry Bull, all of whom were Quakers, were almost continuously in public service in one office or another. William Coddington, son of the old Governor, filled the governorship from 1683 until just before his death, which occurred in 1685. This period, from the close of King Philip's war to the coming of Andros — soon to be described — was a time of fierce controversy for the integrity of the Colony, as Connecticut, Plymouth, and even New Hampshire were all laying claims to the territory of the mainland of Rhode Island — a controversy too long and complicated for this chapter. When the junior Coddington found himself too ill to accept office again — in 1685 — ^a fine old Quaker gentleman, one of the original founders of Aquidneck, Henry Bull, was elected Governor.^ It was plain to everybody during this year that stormy times for the Colony were coming on, and at the next May election Walter Clarke, who had been continuously in office for many years, was elected Governor, and three Quakers, John Easton, Walter Newberry, and Edward Thurston, were chosen assistants. Soon after election the storm broke. The Assembly was informed in June of 1685, by a writ of quo warranto ^ " from his gracious majesty King James II., by the hand of Edward Randolph, Esq., secretary for the New England colonies," that the charter of the Colony was " vacated," and that Rhode Island was annexed to Massachusetts, " under his Majesty's laws and government."' Randolph's task in the Colonies had been for some years to collect information which would furnish adequate ground to annul the charters and bring the whole of New England under the direct control of the Crown, and upon his so-called " information " the King now began to put into operation his large plans for an extensive royal colony. ^ He was one of the sympathizers with Anne Hutchinson, and was " disarmed" as a signer of "the petition." He married Nicholas Easton's widow Ann. He, too, lilie Coddington, had a famous house in Newport in which meetings were often held — a house which is still standing. 2 It was one of the charges in the quo warranto that the Governor, Deputy- Governor, assistants, deputies, and other officers were vnder no legal oaths. cH.vm THE QUAKERS IN POLITICS 193 The Rhode Island Assembly saw that resistance was in vain, and " voted not to stand suit with his majesty," but they prepared " a humble address," asking that their ancient privileges and liberties might be preserved.^ This General Assembly, which was the last one to be held until 1690, made provision for the separate towns of the Colony to govern themselves, while the central colonial administration was annuled. Each town was authorized to hold an annual meeting of five days, or longer, and to manage all matters pertaining to the life and prosperity of the local civic community.^ In June 1686, Sir Edmund Andros, formerly Governor of New York, was commissioned Governor of the united Royal Colony, and almost upon entering upon his ad- ministration, Andros wrote, "in his Majesty's name," demanding the surrender of the charter of Rhode Island, but Walter Clarke did not " feel way open," to send the precious document of their liberties, and it remained in his house. He and another prominent Friend, Walter Newberry of Newport, were selected to be members of Governor Andros's Council for New England,^ and they attended the first meeting of the Council in Boston, 30th December 1686, when they took affirmation, refusing to swear. Governor Andros at this time demanded the delivery of the charter. The Rhode Island members answered that, " 'Twas at the Governor's house in Newport, and that it should be forthcoming when sent for, but in ' Rlwde Island Colony Records, iii. 190. The Friends sent a special address to the King, in which they "humbly prostrated themselves before him," and begged that their views in regard to oaths and war might be respected. Printed in British State Paper Office (New England), vol. iv. p. .419. ' Rhode Island Colony Records, iii. 191. Randolph wrote to the authorities in England, 31st March 1687 : "Our council, consisting of twenty-six persons, has in it but three persons who are of the Church of England. The rest are Quakers, Anabaptists, and either members or followers of the congregational churches. You may from thence make your estimate at what rate his Majestie's interest can be carried on." — Randolph Correspondence (Prince Pub.), vi. 218. VV^alter Clarke was able to be of con- sderable service on the council to Friends, working particularly for the principle of voluntary contribution for the support of ministry in place of compulsory rates. ^ Randolph Papers, ii. 19. Randolph himself wrote a vigorous letter to Uovernor Hinckley of Plymouth, calling him to sharp account for the ' ' arbitrary, 'legal, and unheard of " methods of compelling Quakers to support the established ■ ^^^^■— Randolph Correspondence, iii, 267. O 194 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i regard to [i.e. on account of] the tediousness of the bad weather it could not be brought ! " ^ Each request for surrender was put off by temporising methods, until finally Andros appeared in person with his troops, returning from his fruitless charter " hunt " in Connecticut, and demanded the Rhode Island charter then and there. Walter Clarke, its custodian, was ready for him since he had anticipated such a visit. The story is well told in Theodore Foster's unpublished manuscript : " In the month of November 1687 Sir Edmund Andros came to Newport from Hartford attended by his suite and more than sixty regular troups in order to possess himself of the charter. Governor Clarke, who had it in possession, on hearing of his arrival, sent it to his brother with orders to have it concealed in some place in the knowledge of his secretary, with instructions that the Governor himself should not be informed where it was. Governor Clarke then went to wait on Sir E. Andros and invited him to his house, and so contrived the business that though there was a great parade of searching for it, it could not be found while Sir Edmund remained in Newport. After his departure it was returned to Gov. Clarke, who kept it, until the reorganisa- tion of the government in 1689 when he [Clarke] was again elected to the ofiSce of Governor. His usual caution prevented him from accepting the office, and induced him to refuse to deliver up the charter until after the election of Henry Bull, and on order of the sheriff to take him into custody and confine him in prison — on which he sent the charter to Gov. Bull." ^ The " fall " of Andros came with the success of the English Revolution, closing the Stuart regime and bringing in William and Mary. When the news reached Newport that the government of " usurpation " was at an end, Walter Clarke wrote a letter to the freemen of the Colony, informing them that the Government under which they had been " subservient is now silenced and eclipsed," and calling them to meet at Newport on the day designated in the precious charter for elections, " there to consult and agree on some suitable way in this present juncture." ^ ^ Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, N.S. xiii. 242. 2 Foster Papers relative to the History of Rhode Island, i. 337, in the Providence Historical Society. ' This letter, in Walter Clarke's handwriting, is in vol. iv. of the Foster Papers, cH. vni THE QUAKERS IN POLITICS 195 In accordance with this " call " the freemen of the colony met at Newport ist May 1689, and adopted an address indefinitely, " to the present supreme power in England," " being ignorant," they say, " of what titles should be given and also not so rhetorical as becomes such personages." ^ Andros had reported that the " Quaker Grandees of Rhode Island," who had royally entertained him when he was Governor of New York, "had imbibed nothing of Quakerism except its indifference to forms," and that they cared nothing for the restoration of the old government.^ But the outburst of joy which was manifested at the fall of Andros disproved his estimate. The Newport Assembly declared their " gratitude to the good Providence of God which had wonderfully supported their predecessors and themselves through more than ordinary difficulties and hardships," and they take it to be their duty " to lay hold of our former gracious privileges, contained in our charter," and then by a unanimous vote the old officers were con- firmed. Walter Clarke, with excessive Quaker caution, hesitated to return to the functions of his interrupted office until he knew what the character of the new English government was to be, and what colonial policy it was to adopt.^ For ten months there was no central executive govern- ment, the meeting of the Assembly called for October by Governor Clarke having been prevented by heavy storms. At the Assembly in February 1690, Clarke still declined to serve as chief magistrate. Christopher Almy was elected and also declined. " It was then," as Bancroft says, " that all eyes turned to one of the old Antinomian exiles, the more than octogenarian, Henry Bull ; and the fearless Quaker, true to the light within, employed the last glimmerings of his life to restore the democratic charter of Rhode Island." * Governor Bull was succeeded in office at the end of one term by John Easton, son of ^ Rhode Island Colony Records, iii. 268. ^ Ibid. iii. 339. ' Walter Clarke's course at this time is hard to fathom, though he seems to have had a settled policy and the people appear to have been with him for he was soon again the colonial leader. * History of United States, ii. 448. 196 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i Governor Bull's old friend, Nicholas Easton. He, too, as his father before him, had had an almost continuous career in public office, and he was trained in all the intricacies of colonial affairs. He had been among the leaders of the colony in the dark days of King Philip's war, and he now came to the highest office in his colony when another serious war was devastating both continents — the French and Indian War of William and Mary's reign. The colonies were harried both on the coast and on their inland borders. It was, oddly enough, during the administration of this Quaker that the first naval victory of Rhode Island was won. A fleet of seven French ships descended on the Narraganset coast and did much damage to the defenceless shore, when suddenly they were met by two sloops manned with Rhode Island freemen under command of Captain Thomas Paine, who furiously attacked the enemy, killed or wounded half their force, and drove them off" to sea. One of the fiercest contentions during Easton's term of office was over the control of the militia. Massachusetts and Plymouth had been united under a royal Governor, Sir William Phipps, whose commission gave him the command also of the militia of Rhode Island. This commission was vigorously challenged by the authorities at Newport on the ground that their precious colonial charter gave them power over their own militia. During the winter of 1693, Sir William came in person to Rhode Island and read his commission to Governor Easton. When the reading was over, the imperturbable Quaker quietly replied that when the Assembly met, if it had anything further to say, he would write. It was not easy to overawe such colonial governors. The question of the control of the militia was fought out at great length, the colonists ably holding their position, until finally Queen Mary " surrendered " and wrote to Governor Phipps withdrawing his control of the Rhode Island militia.^ At the same time the Queen asked Rhode Island to furnish ' The documents of this controversy are printed in Rhode Island Colony Records, iii. 285-300. cH. vm THE QUAKERS IN POLITICS 197 forty-eight men to aid in the defence and security of the colony of New York. The actual demand for these " men " came in a request from the Governor of New York in the administration of Caleb Carr — another Quaker politician of long experience — who succeeded Governor Easton in 1695. Governor Carr, like all the other Quaker Governors, disliked extremely to get drawn into affairs beyond the home field ; and he was, too, conscientiously opposed to adopting any actual war measure. He urged that there were great difficulties in the way of supplying the desired " men " and asked of the Governor of New York that his colony might furnish " some other reasonable assistance in com- putation of said forty-eight men." This request was denied, and the " men " were demanded ; but again new reason was found why they could not be sent just then ! Meantime Governor Carr died in ofifice and the old custodian of the charter, Walter Clarke, came back into the governorship, with his old Quaker companion, Walter Newberry, as an assistant. The ancient demand for troops for New York came up again with increased urgency. Governor Clarke replied that the colony had no " men " to spare. " They had themselves," he wrote, " forty miles of sea-coast, with three inlets and no forts, therefore all the soldiers the colony possesses are too few for our defence, and furthermore Massachusetts has ' detained ' several of our towns, further incapacitating the colony." ^ The " men " never went to New York ! There is a letter in the British State Paper Ofifice, signed by W. Clarke, dated 17th September 1702, which declares that the charter of Rhode Island " granted by Charles II. of blessed memory placed the sole power of the militia in us" and the letter significantly adds : " We conceive it our duty to continue the militia as formerly until we receive further order." ^ A new trouble now broke out upon the colony of Rhode Island. There came at this time a radical change in the ' Rhode Island Colony Records, iii. 316. ^ Record office, C.O. 5. 1302. 198 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i plan and method in the Home Office in London of administering the British Colonies, and with the change came also a thorough and searching investigation of the internal affairs and procedure of the colonies. The " investigation " was carried on under the oversight of Edward Randolph, who had already become notorious in the colonies as a collector of " information." The main charges against the colony of Rhode Island were that its officials were not under oath, that the laws of the colony were not published and were badly kept, that the British acts of trade and navigation were disregarded, and that little or no effort was made to suppress piracy — at that time a prevailing evil.^ It was even charged that Rhode Island had become, through the leniency of the Quaker rule, a nest for " pirates, smugglers, and sea-robbers," and this condition was attributed to " the remissness or con- nivance of such as have been or are Governors." ^ Meantime Jahleel Brenton, who had gone to England in the interest of colonial affairs, returned with a com- mission to administer to Governor Clarke an oath of obedience to the acts of trade, and with a commission also to establish in Rhode Island a court of Admiralty. The Governor, as a Quaker, would not take any oath ; and so he refused to take this oath, even though demanded by his sovereign. But he went still further in his bold- ness. He positively refused to allow the court of Admiralty to be established, because he held, in the spirit of the colonists of '^6, that it was an invasion of colonial rights? Edward Randolph gives this interesting glimpse into the situation, reporting his visit to Newport. He writes that he found all the colonists planting tobacco, and he continues : " As the governing power is in the hands of the Quakers and Anabaptists, neither Judges, Jurys nor witnesses are under 1 This was the period of Captain Kidd. ^ Rkode Island Colony Records, iii. 326. ^ Walter Clarke, planting himself squarely on the rights of the charter and refusing to allow royal interference, is one of the beginners of the movement toward Independence. CH.VIII THE QUAKERS IN POLITICS 199 any [sworn] obligation, so that all things are managed ace. to their will and interest [!]. An attempt being made by Mr. Brenton to erect a court of Admiralty under the commission from England, Governor Walter Clarke would not allow it, telling the assembly, then in session, that it would utterly destroy their charter, which empowered the colonists themselves to establish such a court with the proper officers." ^ [The italics are mine.] On this issue, actuated by the highest motives of loyalty to the rights of the colony, Walter Clarke went out of office, stubbornly refusing to yield an iota from the rights of the charter which he had saved for the colony. Samuel Cranston, not a Quaker, but a nephew of Walter Clarke, and in hearty sympathy with the Quaker policy, was put in as Governor and served continuously until his death in 1727, Walter Clarke being Deputy- Governor with him continuously from 1700 to his death in 1714.^ Randolph's "investigations" read very much like the partisan newspaper investigations of the present day ; and one can find here in 1698 partisan charges of "graft" quite similar to those we read to-day. Randolph declares that the Quaker political " machine " has for a long time been growing rich and fat ofif its connivance in piracy ! Two pirates, he says, were recently captured in Newport and about ;^I500 in gold and silver taken from them. They were put in prison : "But about two days after they were admitted to bail, by the Governor (I am informed), one of the Governor's uncles being their security. By which means they have opportunity given to escape, leaving their money to be shared by the Governor and his two uncles, who have been very great gainers by the pirates who have frequented Rhode Island. Walter Clarke, the late Governor and his brother [Weston] now the Recorder of the place, have countenanced pirates and have enriched themselves thereby [!]."* ' Randolph Papers (Prince Pub.), ii. 152. Randolph informed the Home Office in 1700 that Cranston is the present Governor but theQuakers have the sole administration of the government. A similar report was made the year before : ' ' Mr. Cranston was one of the demi-Quakers only put in to serve the Quakers. " See Palfrey's History of New England, iv. 236. To the Board of Trade, 30th May 1698, Rhode Island Colony Records, '»■ 339- 200 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i He admits, in a postscript, that the two pirates are to have a trial, but he says that he expects that they will be acquitted. He adds that he learns that the people are with Walter Clarke in his refusal to take orders sent from England, inconsistent with their charter privileges, and he understands that they are raising money to send Clarke to England to represent the colonial case.^ Here, with the close of Walter Clarke's career in 17 14, ends the first period .of Quaker influence in the colony. Clarke had been four times elected governor, and twenty- three times deputy-governor, dying in the office to which he had been fifteen times successively elected. From the beginning of the colonial government under the charter of 1663, Friends were continuously in office, of one sort or another, occupying the governorship nineteen terms and being a potent force in the Assembly. John Easton, Caleb Carr, and Walter Clarke were among the foremost spiritual leaders of the Quaker society during the period of their political activity. Easton and Clarke were ministers of the gospel and frequently went forth on public religious service. They were constantly involved in issues of the most complex and difficult sort, and they seem through all the shifting currents to have kept true to what they believed was the path of duty and at the same time to have kept the confidence of the people. They were perhaps not great statesmen, but they were brave forerunners of the American idea that the colonists should govern themselves, and they deserve to be drawn out of the oblivion into which they have somewhat fallen, if for nothing else, for their devotion to the principle that gave birth to the American nation and on which its political life rests to-day. The second period of Quaker influence in Rhode Island politics began with the rise of the Wanton family in the early years of the eighteenth century and ended with the disownment of Stephen Hopkins in 1774. It ^ Brigham, ia his Rhode Island, p. i6o, declares that "actual complicity between the colony as a government and the pirates, as so often charged, was never shown by any letter or report submitted to the English authorities." cH. viii THE QUAKERS IN POLITICS 201 was throughout most of this period more an individual influence than a group influence. In 1 700 half the white population of Newport were Quakers/ but as the century progressed other cities in the colony, especially Providence, rapidly grew in population and influence so that the Quakers no longer held their proportion to the whole number of the inhabitants of the colony. They continued, however, to produce men of light and leading ; and they were yet for many years to have a large place in the administration of the colony which they had done much to foster in its formative period. Edward Wanton was one of the foremost figures of the New England Society of Friends in its early days. He had been an officer of guard in Boston on the occasion of the execution of the first Quaker martyrs, and he was deeply moved by their innocence and heroic bearing. He came home from the execution greatly changed, saying as he unbuckled his sword : " Mother, we have been murdering the Lord's people, and I will never put a sword on again." ^ He thereupon took every opportunity which offered to inform himself of the Quaker faith, and sometime before 1 66 1 he had openly avowed himself a Friend. He moved to Scituate, in Plymouth colony, in 1661, and started a very important venture in shipbuilding. He was from the first the leading person in the Quaker group of Scituate, and his house was the home of the meeting and headquarters for all visiting Friends, he himself being the foremost minister in that region. He died in 1 716, as the historian of his town remarks : "With faculties unblurred, mind clear, piety fervent, faith unwavering and active as he nearer approached its realisation, from which he could often review his past life and with soul- stirring eloquence and deep sympathy exhort all to stand fast in the faith." His oldest son, Joseph, moved to Tiverton, Rhode Island, in 1688, and started there a branch of the ship- 1 Annals of Trinity Church, p. lo. '■^ Deane's History of Scituate, Massachusetts, p. 372. 202 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i building business. He was much like his father in large- ness of view, in hospitality, and in his deep interest in the Quaker Society. Both he and his wife (Sarah Freeborn) were public ministers, and they entertained in princely fashion, being also noted far and wide for their benevolence and charity. Two other sons, William (born in 1670) and John (born in 1672), moved to Newport and established there a branch of the shipbuilding industry about 1704. They were men of large business capacity and rapidly acquired great wealth for those times, and soon came to have a very commanding part in the colonial government. William was not a Friend during his public career, though he evidently never lost his love for his father's faith, to which he swung back toward the end of his life. He broke away from the Society of Friends in his youth to marry Ruth Bryant, whose parents were as much opposed to Quakerism as William's family was to Presbyterianism, the creed in which Ruth had been reared. There is a tradition that William one day said ; " Ruth, let us break away from this unreasonable bondage. I will give up my religion and thou shalt give up thine, and we will go to the Church of England and to the devil together." ^ Both the brothers who came to Newport had a military strain in their blood, and in the period of youth they performed dashing naval exploits, chasing and capturing pirates and privateers, and taking an active part in the famous naval expedition of 1 709 against the French in Canada.^ Two of William's vessels were used for the Canadian expedition, and he was on the committee to select officers for the Rhode Island ships. He was almost continuously in some public office between 1704 and his death in the governorship in 1733, to which he was twice elected, having previously been Speaker of the Assembly for seven years. A short time before his death he ^ History of Scituate, p. 374. "^ There is a current story that the good Quaker father once said : " It would be a great grief to my spirit to hear that you had fallen in a military enterprise, but it would be a greater grief to hear that you were cowards. " — History of Scituate, p. 374- cH. vin THE QU4KERS IN POLITICS 203 solemnly remarked : " My father's God is my God and I shall die in the faith of the Quakers." ^ The Wantons were at the height of their financial and social position when the famous philosopher, George Berkeley, came to Newport with large plans for planting a great college in the New World, and they frequently entertained him. " The Quakers with their broad-brimmed hats, came and stood in the aisles " to hear him preach on Sundays,^ and after the Church service was over the philosopher was accustomed to go home to dine with William Wanton. John swung back to his father's faith much earlier in life than his elder brother, and from about 1 7 1 2 he became a pronounced Friend in faith and practice. He early developed a powerful gift in ministry, and devoted much of his time to religious service, preaching both in his home Meeting at Newport and travelling far and wide to deliver his messages when he felt called to go forth. His biographer says : " He was a powerful and eloquent preacher. No eloquence like his, it is said, had been heard in New England. Multitudes flocked to his preaching wherever it was known he was to be present. He travelled extensively in New England and southerly as far as Pennsylvania in which missionary tours he gathered multitudes to the Society of Friends."^ He was considered the wealthiest man in the colony ; his manners were refined, and, though a minister of the Society, he wore " a bright scarlet cloak lined with blue ; " his mind was well cultivated ; his spirit was generous ; he was very popular ; and he had great ability for public service in colonial affairs. His political career began in 1 71 3, the year of his positive affiliation with Friends. He was elected that year a Deputy to the General Assembly and successively until 172 1 when he was chosen Deputy-Governor. He was continuously Deputy-Governor from 1729 to 1733 when he was elected Governor to fill the place made vacant by his brother's death. He served ' " History of the Wanton Family," by J. R. Bartlett, in Rhode Island Hist. TrMts, No. 3, p. 33. Annals of Trinity Church, p. lo. * Rhode Island Hist. Tracts, No. 3, p. 49. 2*4 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. , the colony as Governor for seven successive terms, finally dying in office as his brother had done. Like many Quaker Governors before him he was called upon to steer the colony through a serious war — this time the war between Spain and the mother country in which the colonies were deeply involved.^ An act was passed by Rhode Island in 1 740 putting the colony in a state of defence and providing for the enlistment of soldiers to serve in the West Indies. Governor Wanton, now a prominent Quaker minister, was put in a most delicate and difficult situation. He was obliged as Governor to issue military commissions and to perform many duties of a warlike nature which looked like inconsistencies and which brought him under a fire of criticism from the authorities of the Quaker Meeting. He, however, took the course which his predecessors in office had taken, that as a public officer his first and clearest call was the performance of those duties which the colony had laid upon him, and on the performance of which the life and welfare of the colony rested. He met the committee of Friends unmoved, listened to their charge of inconsistency, and replied that he clearly felt it right to fulfil his obligations as the executive of the colony, one of those same obligations being the protection of the inhabitants of the colony. " I have endeavoured," he added, " on all previous occasions, as on this, to do my whole duty to God and to my fellow-men, without doing violence to the law of my conscience, but in all concerns listening to the still small voice of divine emanation and being obedient to it." 2 The only other Quaker Governor from the Wanton family was Gideon, son of Joseph of Tiverton and grandson of Edward of Scituate. Gideon Wanton was Treasurer of Rhode Island from 1732 to 1744, and he was Governor of the colony at the time of the famous expedition against Cape Breton in the war with France. As Governor he was called upon to furnish troops for the 1 War between Great Britain and Spain was declared in 1739. 2 Rhode Island Hist. Tracts, No. 3, p. 55. cH. vm THE QUAKERS IN POLITICS 205 enterprise, and he complied with the call as his uncles had done in similar straits. Another interesting character, whose colonial services stretched over a period of forty years, and whose influence upon the destiny of the colony was at times greater than that which a Governor could wield, was Richard Partridge, foreign agent of the colony in London. He was the son of William Partridge, who was for several years Governor of New Hampshire, and was born in 1683,^ probably in the town of Newbury, where his father was a prominent member of the Church. He moved to England in his early manhood, joined the Society of Friends, and was for fifty years an acceptable and edifying minister of the Gospel, counting among his personal friends the leaders in the Quaker Society on both sides of the Atlantic.^ He was appointed foreign agent for Rhode Island in June 171 5, "to transact," as his commission says, "for this colony all its concerns beyond seas, to represent this colony before the king and council or otherwise as the affairs of the colony shall require, and he shall be allowed for his salary £40 per annum." ^ He immediately proved his fitness for the delicate diplomatic tasks entrusted to him, for at the autumn session of 1715 the Assembly voted him its thanks for " powerfully exerting himself and using his utmost efforts for excepting the colony of Rhode Island out of the Bill of the House of Commons for regulating the charters of the American colonies." * He was always called upon in times of war to arrange the quotas and contributions which Rhode Island was to furnish, and on a number of occasions he was asked to act for other colonies than Rhode Island. His wisdom and far-sighted judgment appear in all his diplomatic undertakings. The way in which he handled the veto question of 1 7 3 1 is one interesting illustration. The Governor of Rhode Island had vetoed an important Bill and had thus aroused a stormy opposition. His right of New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xiii. 265. ' Thomas Story calls him "my long acquainted friend Richard Partridge." — Imrnal, p. 683. ' Rhode Island Colony Records, iv. 187. ■* Ibid. iv. zoo. 2o6 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i veto was challenged, and he decided to ask the officers of the crown to pass upon the rights of veto granted to the colonial governor by the charter. Partridge at once saw that it would be dangerous for the colony to raise this question and to call the attention of the crown to the extensive privileges granted in the Rhode Island charter. " Such a course," he wrote, " will prove of ill consequence to the colony." ^ Always on the watch for what would affect the rights and privileges of his colony, he anticipated the danger lurking in certain proposed measures regulating trade in the West Indies. He wrote to the Governor of Rhode Island : " The West India gentlemen are not quiet ; they have begun to work through a Bill for encouraging trade with the sugar colonies which will be disadvantageous to the Northern Colonies." ^ This refers to the famous " Molasses Act," or " Sugar Act." The neighbouring colonies were notified of the impending danger, and were asked to join Rhode Island in opposing the Act ; and the entire case for the northern colonies that were especially affected was put in Partridge's hands. He presented a vigorous Petition to the Board of Trade, in which he claimed that the proposed Act involved a violation of the rights of the colonists as Englishmen since it imposed taxes on citizens who -were not represented in Parliament? This is a direct announcement of the principle which was formulated in the Declaration of Independence and which was fought out in the Revolu- tionary War. The opposition effort was not wholly successful, but an unpublished letter from Partridge says : " By my efforts the Bill has been made vastly different from what it was originally drawn." * ' Letter in Foster Papers, ii. 147. There is also a valuable collection of Partridge Letters in the John Carter Brown Library, 2 Ibid. ii. 149. ^ I have searched the British Record Office in vain for this Petition which is referred to in Arnold's History of Rhode Island, ii. 124, but I have found a letter from the Proprietors of Pennsylvania, undoubtedly transmitted by Partridge, which declares that ' ' the proposed ' Sugar Act ' takes from his Majesty's faithful subjects in North America that liberty and freedom of commerce which is their birthright yet unrestrained ! " — Public Record Office CO. 5, No. 13. ■' This Letter is in the Rhode Island State Library. cH. viii THE QUAKERS IN POLITICS 207 In 1752 an order of the King was passed which seemed to the Governor of Rhode Island to threaten the liberties of the colony. He wrote to Richard Partridge : " Use all your efforts to prevent anything being done to lessen our charter privileges. You will understand how much uneasiness the very thought of losing our liberties creates in the inhabitants of this colony and how much dependence they must necessarily have on you, who have been so long their agent and whom they look upon by principle as well as interest so much a friend of liberty. You will exert yourself to the uttermost." ^ One of his difficult diplomatic tasks was that of securing from Great Britain financial compensation for the colony's expenses in connection with the expedition against Cape Breton. He finally succeeded in getting an appropriation of £6 332:12:10, which was precisely the amount which the colony claimed. It was, however, quite another matter to squeeze the actual money out of the Treasury, but, to use his own phrase, he " left no stone unturned." It was in appreciation of such unswerving fidelity and painstaking effort that the colony wrote to him officially in 1756: " The long experience the colony hath had of your diligence and faithfulness in their service leaves no room to doubt of your doing all in your power in this affair [the Crown Point Expedition] for their interests, and as you have hitherto been generally successful in your undertakings on their acct. so they hope you will bring this business to a happy issue for you and them." ^ In 1759, Partridge was compelled by age and feeble- ness to resign his position as agent, and the same year he died.^ No other Quaker in American history, with the excep- tion of William Penn, has achieved such a distinguished political career or has contributed so much to the develop- ment of our national life as Stephen Hopkins of Rhode * Rlu>de Island Colony Records, v. 359. Letter in Rhode Island Historical Manuscripts, vi. 23. ' Richard Partridge was also employed by the London Meeting for Sufferings as their parliamentary agent, for which service he received £^0 annually and expenses. (See Minutes of the Meeting for Sufferings, vol. xxx. pp. 83, 194, 320 iSiifassim.) 2o8 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i Island. He was in a true sense one of the " makers " of the American nation. He was born in Massapauge, now known as South Providence, in March 1 707, though his early years were passed in Chapsumscook now Scituate. His mother, Ruth Wilkinson, was a birthright Friend, a woman of large culture and of marked spiritual gifts, daughter of Samuel Wilkinson who was noted for his "erudition in divine and civil law, historical narrative, natural and politic." ^ In 1726 Stephen Hopkins married Sarah Scott, great-granddaughter of Richard and Catherine Scott, the first Quakers of Providence. His bride was of unbroken Quaker ancestry, back to these " first Quakers," but they were not " married in Meeting," as Stephen Hopkins at this time was not a " member of the Society." He, however, " joined Meeting" about 1755, near the time of his second marriage, which occurred in Quaker Meeting and was by Quaker ceremony.^ The Friends' Meeting was frequently held in Stephen Hopkins' home,^ and it is the testimony of those who knew him that : " In the simplicity of his demeanour, the hearty frankness and calm dignity of manner which were characteristic of him, he reflected no unworthy credit on the training of his Quaker mother."* Like most of the great leaders in the formation of the nation, Stephen Hopkins had a long apprenticeship in local affairs. He first " found " himself and his political principles in the colonial Town-meeting, being chosen " moderator " {i.e. presiding officer) of the Town-meeting when he was twenty-four. He was continuously in township service until he was called to higher colonial and federal spheres of activity. He was still in his youth when he became a citizen of Providence and in this larger Town- ' Updike's Narragansett Church, i. 54. It has been pointed out that in Ruth Wilkinson's home there was ' ' a circulating library, " containing the best literature available at the time, one of the earliest circulating libraries in Rhode Island and probably in the colonies. (See Rhode Island Hist. Tracts, No. 19, pp. 46-47. ) ^ See Historical Collection of the Essex Institute, ii. 120. The Quaker marriage certificate is in the Roberts Collection at Haverford College. ^ See Letter of Moses Brown to Robert Wain (1828). * W. E. Foster's "Stephen Hopkins, a Rhode Island Statesman" (in Rhoit Island Hist. Tracts, No. 19), p. 58. cH.vm THE QUAKERS IN POLITICS 209 meeting he was again and again — often in great crises — chosen moderator. He went to the General Assembly when he was twenty-five, and was a member of this body continuously for six years. He had also an important judicial training and a distinguished career on the Bench, rising to the highest judicial place in the gift of the Colony. He was elected Governor in 1755, the year he became a Friend, and between that date and 1768 he served in the governorship nine terms, through one of the stormiest political contests in the history of Rhode Island, and he finally declined to accept further nomination as Governor in order to end the political fight which had lasted with much heat for ten years, since he saw the importance of having the Colony united for the greater conflict which was now coming into sight upon the horizon. During these years of judicial and political activity he had, with his lifelong friend Moses Brown, been contributing his great powers to the commercial and intellectual expansion of the city of Providence, for it was at this period that Providence forged forward to its prominent place among the colonial cities. " He was," as Chief-Justice Durfee has said, " a man of extraordinary capacity, omnivorous of knowledge, which his energetic mind rapidly converted into power ; and wherever we see the colony or any parts of its people moving in ways higher than the average, there we are sure to find Stephen Hopkins prominent in the movement." ^ He was first chosen for intercolonial service in 1746 during the second Spanish War, when he was selected one of the commissioners from Rhode Island to meet with those from the other Colonies to consult for the defence and safety of the country. Again in 1754 — during the " French and Indian War " — he was a delegate to the famous colonial Congress held in Albany, at which Franklin proposed a plan of union, and he was commissioner in the colonial Congresses of 1755, I7S7, and 1758. He was one of the first to see clearly the principle of the unconstitutionality of taxation without * Rhode Island Hist. Tracts, No. 19, p. 124. 210 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i representation. He had reached his insight of this principle at least as early as 1756, as the following passage, taken from a deposition of Job Almy in a lawsuit between Stephen Hopkins and Samuel Ward, plainly indicates : "I dined," the deposer says, "at Mr. Jonathan Nicholas', Innholder at Newport, March 1756, where were present Stephen Hopkins, Esq., then Governor of this colony and President of the said Court [the Superior Court], Wm. Richmond, Esq., another of the Justices of said Court, and Mr. John Aplin, with some other gentleman. And as in conversation I was blaming Mr. Aplin (who was my attorney) for not insisting on the late Act of Parliament wherein it is expressly declared that no Bills of public credit would be a legal tender for any money debt, the said Stephen Hopkins with some warmth replied : ' What have the King and parliament to do with making a law or laws to govern us any more than the Mohawks have? And if the Mohawks should make a law or laws to govern us we were as much obliged to obey them as any law or laws the King and parliament could make.' At the same time the said Stephen Hopkins further said that as our forefathers came from Leyden \i.e. the Pilgrims] and were no charge to England, the States of Holland had as good a right to claim us [tax us ? ] as England had." 1 As soon as news reached America that Parliament was considering a proposition to lay taxes on the Colonies, Stephen Hopkins began a remarkable series of articles in the Providence Gazette, of which he had been one of the founders, on the Rights of the Colonists. These articles of his went deeper into the foundation principles of self-government and the true safeguards of liberty than any documents which had up to that time appeared in the colonies. The substance of these papers was gathered up in an important pamphlet and laid before the General Assembly of Rhode Island in 1764, a year before the Stamp Act was passed, and this document was put into general circulation, and was very widely read throughout the Colonies, and became one of the creative documents in shaping the course of American history. ' The Law Reporter for 1859, vol. xxii. p. 338. cH.vni THE QUAKERS IN POLITICS 211 Already, in this early paper, Stephen Hopkins taught the colonists to think in terms of country. As soon as news of the actual passage of these Acts of colonial taxation reached Rhode Island, Governor Hopkins called a special session of the General Assembly, and he was the leader in the great Town-meeting of Providence which formulated a draft of instructions to the General Assembly.^ It even surpassed in boldness the resolutions adopted by the House of Burgesses of Virginia under the eloquence of Patrick Henry, and it ended with the downright assertion : "The inhabitants of this colony are not bound to yield obedience to any law or ordinance designed to impose any internal taxation whatever upon them other than the laws and ordinances of the General Assembly." ^ Parliament, under the storm of opposition, repealed the Stamp Act, but asserted its right to tax the Colonies, and emphasized the right by the imposition of a tax on certain imports. A Town-meeting was called in Provi- dence to propose a plan for avoiding this tax. A committee, of which Stephen Hopkins was a member, drew up a resolution that only home-produced articles should be used while this tax was in force. These resolutions are in the handwriting of Moses Brown.^ As the storm of hostility against the mistaken course of the mother-country grew in violence, Rhode Island, always a liberty-loving Colony, became one of the most intense storm centres of opposition. It was from the city of Providence that the party of " patriots " headed by John Brown, the brother of Moses Brown, sallied out and burned the King's ship Gasp^e, stationed in the Bay to enforce the revenue acts ; and as the storm gathered still darker, it was the Town-meeting of Providence, in which Stephen Hopkins was the foremost person, that made the ■ first formal and official proposal for a Continental Congress, and Rhode Island was the first Colony to elect delegates to that congress, Stephen Hopkins being one of Hopkins was chairman of the committee which formulated this document. Staples' Annals of Providence, pp. 210-213. ' Ibid. p. 217. 212 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i the delegates.'' In 1776, with trembling hand, trembling not from fear but from advancing palsy, he signed the Declaration of Independence, toward which he had been for more than a decade steadily moving and leading the people.^ This chapter of Quaker political history is far from a complete account of the part which the Quakers took in the colonial politics of Rhode Island. It has dealt only with the leaders ; but the unnamed people behind the leaders are always at least as important a factor as the leaders themselves, and there was always a large group of Quakers around each Quaker leader. This deeper history of the people themselves cannot be written. This chapter, furthermore, of necessity has treated the Quaker factor quite too much in isolation. The Quakers were not a class apart — a peculiar order of humanity. They were simply men like other men, sometimes peculiarly dressed and using somewhat odd speech, but a part of a larger whole and owing much of their political success to the non-Quaker element with which they worked. They had then, as we have now, narrowness, greed, corruption, and misrepresentation to face. Conditions were no more angelic then than in the present year of grace, and these adherents of the inward Light were throughout their political career on the " perilous edge." Every issue had its practical complications, its mean aspects. No claim is here made that these " heroes " were always wise, or always right, or always great, but they are a fair illustration of our best common people, doing their duties with fearless spirit, uniting religion with practical daily life, exhibiting loyalty in the hard field of politics, and never bartering for selfish ends " the priceless jewel of their soul." ' When the order came to arrest the "patriots" who burned the Gasf^ and send them to England for trial Stephen Hopkins, then Chief-Justice of the colony, said : "I will neither apprehend any person by my own order, nor suffer any executive officers in the colony to do it." — Weeden, Early Rhode Island, p. 336- ^ He was, however, at the time of signing the Declaration no longer a member of Meeting for reasons given in the preceding chapter. BOOK II QUAKERISM IN THE COLONY OF NEW YORK CHAPTER I THE PLANTING OF QUAKERISM IN NEW YORK " New York " was a part of the Dutch Colony of New Netherlands when the Quaker " invasion " of the Colonies began. The Dutch had passed through their baptism of fire in one of the most heroic struggles in history, and had, at great cost, won their religious freedom. They had before most peoples gained the tolerant attitude. They had furnished, in their home-land, an asylum to the harried English Separatists ; and they had long been accustomed to the " lay-type " of Christianity, embodied in the Mennonite Anabaptists, who had, before George Fox, advanced many of the ideas and peculiarities of the Quakers. The Proprietaries of New Netherlands had expressly directed that all forms of religion should be tolerated in the Colony.^ It would have been a natural prediction, therefore, that Quakerism would flourish undisturbed in the Dutch Colony, but on the contrary it spread here, as in the Puritan Colonies, only in the face of stern opposition. Long Island, however, presented a prepared soil for the new religious seed, something like that which we have seen in Rhode Island, Sandwich, and on the island of Nantucket. Though under the Dutch Government, many of the towns on the island were settled by English colonists, a large number of them being persons who had left Massachusetts in order to secure greater religious . ' The settlers of Maspeth (Newtown) on Long Island, to cite a particular "•stance, were induced to come to the Dutch territory on the promise of civil and religious freedom. — Ecclesiastical Records of New York, i. 138. 215 2i6 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. n freedom. We have seen how the religious teaching of Anne Hutchinson prepared the way for the spread of Quakerism on Rhode Island and at other places in New England ; so, too, it was in large measure due to the religious influence and leadership of another woman that the towns of Long Island were prepared for the Quaker message which came to them in 1657. This woman was Lady Deborah Moody. Her maiden name was Deborah Dunch, and she belonged to a distinguished family, her father, Walter Dunch, having rendered good service to his country in the reign of Elizabeth. She married Sir Henry Moody of Garesden in Wiltshire, but was left a widow in early life. She showed, even in her English period, great independ- ence of mind and a determination to follow fearlessly her own light. This independent spirit soon brought her into collision with the Court of the Star-Chamber ; and being an intimate friend of the Winthrops, she resolved to migrate to Massachusetts to secure the freedom which she despaired of gaining at home. She settled in Lynn about 1640 and purchased an extensive estate called " Swampscot," ^ but was hardly settled there on her beautiful cliff farm before her liberal views brought her into trouble with the Salem Church. The Court pro- ceedings, under date of December 1642, report that " Lady Deborah Moody, Mrs. King, and the wife of John Tillton were presented for houldinge that the baptising of Infants is noe ordinance of God," ^ in other words a group of Anabaptists was forming in Lynn with Lady Moody as its spiritual leader. Winthrop gives an in- teresting glimpse of her " heresy " : " The Lady Moodye, a wise and anciently religious woman, being taken with the error of denying baptism to infants was dealt with by many of the elders and others, but persisting still and to avoid further trouble, etc., she removed to the Dutch against the advice of all her friends. Many others, infected ' Letchford, in 1641, says : " Lady Moody lives at Lynn but is of the Salem Church. She is a good lady but almost undone by buying Master Humphries' farm Swampscot." ^ Newhall's Hisioty cf Lynn (Boston, 1865), p. 204. cH. 1 QUAKERISM IN NEW YORK 217 with anabaptism, removed thither also. She was after ex- communicated." ^ As Winthrop intimates, she refused to accept the offered theological direction, insisted upon her right to live in the faith which seemed to her true, and once more migrated to secure the privilege of freedom. She moved to Long Island and purchased a large estate at Gravesend, and with her migrated also a large number of the Lynn settlers, " infected," as Winthrop says, " with Anabaptism," A Petition to the General Court in 1645 refers to this migration as follows : " Those fewe able persons which were with and of us it's not unknowne how many of them have deserted us, as my Lady Moody." 2 Three years before Lady Moody's pilgrimage to Gravesend, forty families from Lynn had planted a Colony on Long Island with large guarantees of freedom and with the design to build up there a Church " gathered and constituted according to the minde of Christ, for," they say, " wee do ffreely lay down our power at the ffeete of Christ," ^ and throughout this decade there were frequent migrations from Lynn to the Long Island towns, so that in Flushing, Gravesend, Jamaica, Hempstead, and Oyster Bay there were many persons who had deserted Lynn to find religious freedom, and who shared with Lady Moody the advanced and liberal ideas which in that generation were gathered up under the name of " Anabaptism." A characteristic entry in the Massachusetts Records for 1643 says : " Rev. Mr. Walton of Marblehead is for Long Island shortly, there to set down with my lady Moody, from under civill and church ward, among ye Dutch." The ecclesiastical records of New Amsterdam make the fact very plain that many of the English inhabitants of these Long Island towns were not kindly disposed toward the prevailing orthodox Calvinism, but on the ^ "WmUvcop's History of New England, ii. 148. ^ History of Lynn, p. 214. ^ Ibid. p. 194. 21 8 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. u contrary were either of the Anabaptist or of the Seeker type. In 1653 the Director-General of the Colony com- plained that magistrates on Long Island were being selected without regard to their religion, and especially, he says, " the people of Gravesend who elect libertines [free-thinkers] and anabaptists."^ Three years later William Hallett was banished from the Province of New Netherlands for allowing conventicles and gatherings in his house at Flushing, and William Wickendam, a cobbler by trade, was also banished for having taken the leading part in these house meetings, which seem to have been meetings for worship after the manner of the small dissenting sects.^ In 1657, the year the Quakers arrived on Long Island, two of the leading Dutch ministers in the Colony, Joannes Megapolensis and Samuel Drisius, both keen in the scent of heresy, wrote to the Classis of Amsterdam a full account of the religious condition in New Amsterdam. They reported the people at Gravesend to be Anabaptists of the Mennonite type. " The majority of them," they say, " reject the baptism of infants, the observance of the Sabbath, the office of preacher, any teachers of God's word. They say that thereby all sorts of contentions have come into the world. Whenever they meet, one or the other reads something to them." " At Flushing," the report says, " many persons have become imbued with divers opinions. They absented themselves from the sermon and would not pay the preacher [Francis Doughty] his salary.' Last year a troublesome fellow, a cobbler from Rhode Island came there saying he had a commission from Christ " [evidently William Wickendam]. At Middleburg, a part of Newtown, the people are said to be mostly Independents who have an unordained preacher " who does not' serve the sacra- ments." At Hempstead "the people listen attentively to the sermons of Richard Denton, a pious, godly, and ^ Colonial Documents of New York, xiv. 235. ^ Ecclesiastical Records of New York, i. jfix-'^fs'i. ^ The salary of Francis Doughty was to have been six hundred guilders, but it was never paid ; and it was found, when the minister sued for his salary, that Wm. Lawrence's wife had destroyed the contract by "putting it under a pye." cH. I QUAKERISM IN NEW YORK 219 learned man," but when he began to baptize children, " many persons rushed out of the church ! " ^ Such, then, was the spiritual condition of the Long Island towns when the first messengers of Quakerism came thither to make convincements. There was already in existence here a type of religion which was independent of ordained ministers, which regarded the sacraments as unnecessary and which welcomed the common man who came with a direct commission. They were by the bent of their minds open to the word of the preachers of the inward Light. In fact, one Quaker seems to have been raised out of their own group even before any messengers came. This was Richard Smith. He had been to England on a visit in 1654, had apparently come under the influence of William Dewsbury,^ and had returned a convinced Friend, so that he was the first Quaker in the American colonies. When the eight Friends came out from England in 1656 on their missionary journey to New England, they halted either at New Amsterdam or on Long Island and picked up this Richard Smith on their way and took him with them on their bold venture. He was hurried back to Long Island by ship that he might not contaminate or infect any body by a land journey ! ' " The spiritual Argonauts " who came in the ship Woodkouse, with Captain Fowler in 16^7, were the first Quakers known to have landed in New Amsterdam, now New York city. Five of the eleven, Robert Hodgson, ^ Ecclesiastical Records of New York, i. 393-399. * Francis Ellington's Tract, A True Discovery (London, 1655). ' This was Richard Smith of Southampton, Long Island, and not, as Bowden (vol. i. p. 310) assumes, the famous trader of that name who in 1641 "erected a house of trade and entertainment" in the Narragansett country. This latter Richard Smith never became a Friend. He settled at Maspeth, on Long Island, about 164s and remained there a few years (see Riker's Annals of Newtown), but he was back in Narragansett by 1649. The Records of Southampton for October 1656 furnish one piece of information about Richard Smith the Quaker: " It is ordered by the General Court that Richard Smith, for his unreverend carriage toward the magistrates contrary to the order, was adjudged to be banished out of the town, and he is to have a week's liberty to prepare himself to depart ; and if at any time he be found after this limited week within the bounds of the town he shall forfeit twenty shiUings. It is ordered by the General Court that Richard amith for his unreverend carriage to the magistrate was judged to pay the sum of 5 pounds to be levied immediately upon the goods and chattels of the said Richard utnith. ' He is in the same Records called ' ' an emissary of Sathan, a Quaker. " 220 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. a Richard Doudney, Mary Wetherhead, Dorothy Waugh, and Sarah Gibbons, stopped in the Dutch Colony while the rest went on to Rhode Island. Captain Fowler, before the Woodhouse left the port of New Amsterdam, with Robert Hodgson, paid a visit to Governor Stuyvesant and found him " moderate both in words and actions." His " moderation " was, however, soon changed. The next day Mary Wetherhead and Dorothy Waugh preached to the people in the streets of New Amsterdam, and the effect of this novel sight upon the Dutch inhabitants was instantaneous and pronounced. They had no desire to see their womenfolk catch this odd custom of preaching in the streets, and they soon had the two women in " a noisome, filthy dungeon " — a more than usually vile jail even for the seventeenth century ; and after eight days they brought them out of the dark hole, and sent them with their hands tied behind them to that "sewer of heretics," Rhode Island, to join their companions. The two ministers already quoted, Joannes Megapolensis and Samuel Drisius, wrote to the authorities in Amsterdam an interesting account, though considerably coloured, of this invasion : "On August 6th (or 12th) a ship came from the sea to this place, having no flag flying from the topmast, nor from any other part of the ship. . . . They fired no salute before the fort. When the master of the ship came on shore and appeared before the Director-General, he rendered him no respect, but stood with his hat firm on his head as if a goat (!). ... At last information was gained that it was a ship with Quakers on board. . . . We suppose they went to Rhode Island for that is the receptacle of all sorts of riff-raff people and is nothing else than the sewer of New England. They left behind two strong young women. As soon as the ship had departed, these [women] began to quake and go into a frenzy, and cry out loudly in the middle of the street that men should repent, for the day of judgment was at hand. Our people not knowing what was the matter ran to and fro while one cried ' fire ' and another some- thing else. The Fiscal seized them both by the head and led them to prison." ^ ' Ecclesiastical Records of New York, i. 399. CH.I QUAKERISM IN NEW YORK 221 The other three members of the party who remained behind made a tour of Long Island, where they found many hearts ready for their message, especially in the towns of Gravesend, Jamaica, and Hempstead. Hodgson concluded to stay in Hempstead for a larger service, while his two companions went on through the island and across to Rhode Island, and upon him fell a baptism of persecu- tion of a peculiarly furious sort. Hodgson had invited the inhabitants of Hempstead to a meeting in an orchard on a certain " First-day," and as he was pacing back and forth in quiet meditation among the trees of the orchard waiting for meeting to begin, he was " violently seized " by a local magistrate named Richard Gildersleeve who took him as a prisoner to his own house. The officer left his prisoner and went to the morning religious service. When he returned he found a company gathered and Hodgson preaching to them ! He was thereupon moved to the house of a magistrate and still the people came " to hear truth." Word was now sent to Governor Stuyvesant, who despatched a sheriff and jailer with a guard of twelve musketeers to bring the prisoner to New Amsterdam. They pinioned Hodgson and left him closely bound for a whole day while they hunted out the persons who had entertained him. Two women were finally arrested on this charge, one of whom had two small children — one a babe still on the breast. They were placed in a cart, to the tail of which Hodgson was tied, and thus they journeyed through an entire night to Brooklyn ferry, and so across to New Amsterdam.^ The women were soon set free, but Robert Hodgson was sentenced to a fine of a hundred guilders, or hard labour at a wheelbarrow with a negro for two years, " in order to suppress the evil in the beginning." As Friends always did do, he refused to pay the fine. He was brought out and chained to the wheelbarrow, but feeling himself innocent of any violation of law, he refused to work. ' There is a Dutch account of Hodgson's arrest and punishment preserved in Ecclesiastical Records of New York, i. 410. This account gives the distance Hodgson was carried as twenty-one English miles. 222 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. h He was thereupon beaten almost to death with a tarred rope, then chained to the barrow, and left in the hot sun all day. The next day he was again brought out, chained to the barrow, and ordered by the Governor in person to work. Proving unyielding, he was next tied up by the hands with a heavy log of wood hung on his ankles and whipped on his bare back, and then thrust into a dungeon "too bad for swine." As news of his sufferings got abroad, a humane Englishwoman got into the prison to see him, washed his stripes, and told her husband of his desperate condition. The husband offered the officer in charge one of his oxen if he would release the Quaker. Others also came forward and offered to pay the fine. Hodgson declined to accept liberation on this principle, as he was innocent. His sufferings, however, made such a deep impression on the liberty-loving Dutch people that powerful influences were brought to bear on the Governor, who finally set him free without any payment at all, and Hodgson passed on to join his friends in Rhode Island.! This brief and hampered presentation of Quakerism on Long Island was remarkably effective, and resulted in the rapid formation of Quaker groups. The people were in an expectant state, with spirits prepared for the new message and the new manner of life, and they accepted the Quaker faith almost by whole communities. If we may trust Gerard Croese, an inaccurate though con- temporary Dutch historian, Lady Moody almost at once became a Friend. "There was at Gravesend," he says, " a noble lady, the countess of Mordee who turned Quaker." " She gave the people of this Society," he continues, " the liberty of meeting in her house, but she managed it with such prudence and observance of time and place that she gave no offense to any stranger or person of any other religion than her own, and so she and her people remained free from all molestation and ^ The accounts of this episode are found in Bishop's New England Judged, p. 213 ; Sewel's History, i. 398 ; Bowden's History, i. 312 ; Brodhead's History of New York, i. 636. c„. , QUAKERISM IN NEW YORK 223 disturbance." ' The first convincements were made almost entirely among her friends and sympathisers. The Tiltons, the Townsends, the Farringtons, the Thornes, the Feakes, and a number of other families had probably been her associates in Lynn and had come to Long Island at the time of her migration. As soon as persecution came upon the new movement the first local heroes came out of this prepared group. Governor Stuyvesant was the instrument of this early persecution, but, as nearly all the authorities imply, he was urged and almost pushed to it by influence from Massachusetts. When once he had undertaken the course of suppressing the invading "heresy," he pursued it with the tenacity native to his race and disposition. The first step against the move- ment was the proclamation of a law imposing a fine of fifty pounds upon any colonist who entertained a Quaker even for one night, and providing for the confiscation of any ship which should import a Quaker into the Colony,^ and at the same time an old, somewhat dormant law against conventicles was revived. Henry Townsend of Flushing was the first person to suffer under this new system of extermination which the Governor had inaugurated. He was found guilty of violation of the conventicle law and was heavily fined, but he absolutely refused to pay his fine though he found the prison into which he was thrown extremely " irksome." His wife, however, " moved by the cries of her small children," gave the authorities two young oxen and a horse for her husband's release.* The inhabitants of Flushing were profoundly stirred by this invasion of their liberties. They gathered in a public meeting, expressed their disapproval of the acts of persecution, and drew up a remonstrance which was signed by thirty-one men and sent to the Governor, the signers of which included the town clerk Edward Hart, who wrote the document, and ' Croese, General History of the Quakers, translated (London, 1696), ii. 157. Lady Moody was intimate with Governor Stuyvesant, which fact no doubt pro- tected her meetings. She, however, died in 1663 soon after the movement began. Laws and Ordinances of New Netherlands, i. 439. ' Bishop, pp. 218-219. 224 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i, the sheriff, Tobias Feake. The remonstrance declared that the patent, or charter, of their town " grants liberty of conscience without modification," and that the signers intended to stand by their precious rights regardless of what it might cost them in suffering. They say in straightforward fashion : " Right Honourable, you have been pleased to send up unto us a certain command that wee should not receive or entertaine any ofthose people called Quakers. . . . For our parte wee cannot condemn them, neither can wee stretch out our hands against them. . . . Wee desire in this case not to judge least wee be judged, neither to condemn least wee be condemned, but rather let every man stand or fall to his own. Maister, wee are bounde by the Law to doe good unto all men, especially to those of the House- hold of faith ; and though for the present wee seem to be un- sensible of the law and the Lawgiver; yet when death and the law assault us, if wee have not our Advocate to seeke, who shall plead for us in this case of conscience betwixt God and our soules ? The powers of this world can neither attack us nor excuse us ! " ^ A number of these thirty-one signers had come from Lynn to Long Island in pursuit of the precious privilege of religious liberty ; others on the list were English Separatists who, like the Pilgrim Fathers, had lived in Holland to escape oppression and had migrated from there to the New World under promises of freedom.^ They knew what freedom was worth and they were resolved to have it, even " though death and the law assault " them. " I do not know," John Fiske says, " whether Flushing has ever raised a fitting monument to their memory. If I could have my way I would have the protest carved on a stately obelisk with the name of Edward Hart, town clerk and the thirty other Dutch and English names appended, and would have it set up where all might read it for the glory of the town which had such men for its founders." * The vengeance of the Governor fell with severity upon 1 The Remonstrance is given in full in Ecclesiastical Records of New York, '■412- ^ See Ttiompson's Long Island, ii. 69. ^ Dutch and Quaker Colonies, i. 235. cH. I QUAKERISM IN NEW YORK 225 the signers of the remonstrance, especially upon those who held official positions, and the town of Flushing was deprived by the Governor of its right to hold Town- meetings, but the Governor's course did not crush the spirit of these earnest men who insisted on " the excellent order and custom of the Fatherland " ; it rather hastened the formation of a Quaker society in the neighbourhood.^ A contemporary record says that " most of the inhabitants of Flushing are Quakers, who rove about the country from one village to another, corrupting the youth." Domine Megapolensis and Drisius report in 1658 : " The raving Quakers have not settled down, but continue to disturb the people of this province. Although our govern- ment has issued orders against these fanatics, nevertheless they do not fail to pour forth their venom. There is but one place in New England where they are tolerated and that is Rhode Island which is the sewer of New England. Thence they swarm to and fro sowing their tares." ^ Among those who " swarmed " into Long Island in this early period must be mentioned Thomas Thurston and Josiah Coale who passed through Long Island on their foot-journey from Virginia to New England. They were "much refreshed" to find in the towns of Long Island " some Friends in the Truth," ^ and there seems already in 1658 to have been quite a nucleus of Quakers in several towns. The next year, 1659, a quaint and interesting Friend, named John Taylor, from York, England, made a tour of the island. He writes : " It came into my heart to go and visit the people of Long Island and to seek the lost. And it pleased the Lord so to order my way, that I found in several towns and villages a pretty many John Tilton and his wife Mary, tiie wife of Joseph Scott, and the wife of Francis Weeks were among those who had to endure hard persecutions. Nine Qualters were in the jail in New Amsterdam at one time. "Goody Tilton, wife of John Tilton, was charged with the crime of having, like a sorceress, gone from door to door to lure and seduce the people, even young girls, to join the Quakers. " Her husband was charged with having ' ' permitted Quakers to quake at his house '" Gravesend."— Thompson's Long Island. Ecclesiastical Records of New York, i. 433. Letter of Josiah Coale to George Bishop, 1658.— Bowden, i. 18. Q 226 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. n fine, sober people that feared God and were convinced of the blessed Truth. They did receive me and my testimony readily with gladness. Many meetings of the people were settled under the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ, our free Teacher, at Gravesend, Seatancott,i Oyster Bay, Hemsted, and other places, sometimes in the woods and wilderness." ^ Another island now comes into prominence in the history of Quakerism, " Shelter- Island^'near the east end of Long Island, between Gardmer's Bay and Peconis jB^iy, It was originally named " Farret's Island," but was purchased by three citizens of Barbadoes, Thomas Rous, Constant and Nathaniel Sylvester, and an Englishman named Thomas Middleton. They paid sixteen hundred pounds of sugar for the island. The Sylvesters bought out Rous' share in 1662, and by the payment of one hundred and fifty pounds, " one half in beef and the other half in pork," the owners got their island exempted for ever from taxes and military duty.* Nathaniel Sylvester, who finally came into possession of the island, was a Quaker, and he proceeded to make his island a real " shelter " for harried Friends. John Taylor landed on this island on his way out from England, and he spent some time on it in 1659. He speaks as though there were already many Friends on the island. Beside those already there, " several Friends," he says, " came from other parts in New England." " We had several brave meetings there together, and the Lord's Power and Presence was with us gloriously." * George Rofe, an Englishman, gives us our next glimpse through Quaker eyes of the Dutch colony. He sailed in 1 66 1 " in a small boat with only two Friends," from Maryland, and came into the port of New Amsterdam. He writes : ' "Seatancott" must mean Setauket, whose inhabitants in 1659 petitioned the General Court of Hartford for jurisdiction, and many of them came later to Matinecock as Quakers, for example, the Underhills, the Cocks, and others. 2 Memoir of John Taylor (London, 1710), p. 18. ' Brodhead, op. cit. ii. 106. * Memoir of John Taylor, p. 22. Lawrence and Cassandra Southwick came to Shelter Island in 1659 to escape their unbearable persecutions in Salem. CH.I QUAKERISM IN NEW YORK 227 " I had good service among both Dutch and English. I was in the chief city of the Dutch, and gave a good sound, but they forced me away ; and so we had meetings through the islands in good service." ^ The little society in Flushing soon found a yeoman leader in one of its own members, John Bowne, "the blameless Bowne," as Bancroft calls him. He had immigrated from Derbyshire, first to Boston and then to Long Island where in 1656 he married Hannah Field, who became attached to the new Society in Flushing, and took the risks of going to the meetings, which at first were held in the woods to escape the notice of those who were hostile. John Bowne out of curiosity went with his wife to a meeting, was impressed with the spiritual reality of the movement, and invited the Friends to hold their meetings in his house — a fine dwelling-house erected in 1661 in the eastern end of the village near two magnificent oak trees. He soon allied himself positively with the new venture and became a member of the Society. It was quickly reported that the Bowne house had become a " conventicle " for Quakers, and the owner was arrested, fined £2^, and threatened with banishment on non-payment. The threat, as usual, made no impression. At the end of three months, during which Bowne had lain in prison, an Order was passed in Council to transport hira, " if he continues obstinate and pervicacious," from the province, " for the welfare of the community, and to crush as far as it is possible that abominable sect who treat with contempt both the political magistrates and the ministers of God's holy Word, and endeavour to undermine the police and religion." He did continue " pervicacious," and was transported by the ship Gilded Fox to Amsterdam. Upon landing he laid his case before the Directors of the West India Company, and as soon as their liberty-loving spirits were wakened they gave him satisfaction — " they spoke no word tending to the approval of what had been done against Quakers." ' A.R.B. Collection (Devonshire House), No. 62. 228 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. h They wrote a letter to Stuyvesant, not quite as dramatic in its delivery as the " King's Missive" in Massachusetts, but absolutely effective for its purpose. The substance of the message was : " It is our opinion that some connivance is useful, and that the consciences of men ought to remain free and unshackled. Let every one remain free as long as he is modest, moderate, and his poUtical conduct irreproachable." ^ Soon after his return as a free man, John Bowne was walking the street of Flushing and met the Governor. The chief magistrate " seemed much abashed for what he had done," but showed his manliness by saying, " I am glad to see you safe home again." The straightforward Quaker acknowledged his greeting and added, " I hope thou wilt never harm any more Friends." ^ And he never did. Bowne's victory had, as moral victories generally do have, far-reaching consequences. He not only won his personal freedom, but he called forth from the Directors of the Colony a proclamation of the principle of complete religious toleration, " The consciences of men ought to remain free and unshackled." But that was not all. When the next year the Colony was conquered by the English, an article establishing " liberty of conscience in divine worship and church discipline " for all Dutch subjects was put in the articles of agreement surrendering the territory. In 1664, the year the Colony passed into English control, the " Duke's law " provided that " no person shall be molested, fined, or imprisoned for differing in judgment in matters of religion," and from that time on the principle was recognised throughout the Colony as a fundamental right, though in practice it was still occasion- ally violated.^ ^ Ecclesiastical Records of New York, i. 530. Bowden's History (i. 324-325) gives the correspondence in full, ^ Bishop, p. 423. ' There were sporadic attempts to harry the Quakers throughout the seventeenth century, always in the interests of the Established Church. I have found this interesting letter from Richard Gildersleeve, constable, to Governor Andros of New York : ' ' Right Honorable — Whereas your honor was pleased to lay some command cH. I QUAKERISM IN NEW YORK 229 The Colony became English territory by the terms of surrender in 1664, and was organised as a British Colony with a Governor from the mother country. It was re- conquered by the Dutch in 1673, but with the settlement of peace in 1674 it was restored to the English. The little groups of Friends in the Colony were in this transition period much expanded, and entered upon a new stage of their development, as a result of the visits of important missionary Friends. The first of these constructive visits was that of John Burnyeat, who makes the first mention we have of a permanent organisation of the Friends on Long Island. He writes : "I arrived at New York the 27th day of Second month [April old style] 167 1, and from New York I went to Long Island, and visited Friends on the island and other places there- away [probably Shelter Island], and was with them at their half- year's meeting at Oyster Bay." ^ Burnyeat was back again for extended work at the end of six months, when he visited all the meetings on the island, and attended again the Half- Year's Meeting at Oyster Bay.^ " The Lord's power broke in upon the meeting, and Friends' hearts were broken, and there were great meltings among us. Friends were comforted and the seed and life reigned over all." ^ upon mee for the prevention of Quaker Meettings within our towne of Herastead, which accordingly I have done to the best of my power by forewarning Captain John Seman. Being sick and not able to go myself, I sent two overseers to fore- warn him that he should not entertain any such meeting att his house, yett nott withstanding his answer was that he tooke no notice of the warning, and proceeded to have and had a very great meeting the lastt Lordsday being the 28th of this instant. Hopping these few hnes may find your honors favorable acceptance, and render mee excusable, and thatt your Honor will be pleased to take it in to your serious consideration for the ffuter pruention of the like : nott troubleing your Honor any further I remain Your Honors Humble seruantt Richard Gildersleeve, Hemstead, May 26, 1679." — Ecclesiastical Records of New York, i. 723. ' Journal of John Burnyeat, p. 196. This Oyster Bay Half- Year's Meeting was until 1695 a part of New England Yearly Meeting. " He found the Long Island Friends at this time somewhat divided, as a result of the influence of a party in England opposed to George Fox and the system of organisation which was being put into operation. The contention was increased at this time because Burnyeat had brought with him a copy of Fox's Book of Advice and Discipline, and the Ranters produced their ' ■ Book " m opposition. — ^xa Journal, pp. 197-198. ' Journal, p. 198. 230 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. n On his way south, Burnyeat held a meeting in New York City, which is the first mention I have found of! a Quaker meeting held on Manhattan Island. At the next gathering of the Oyster Bay Half- Year's Meeting, in April of 1672, the great founder himself, George Fox, was present, having travelled from Maryland by forced marches — " earnestly pressed in spirit " — to get to Long Island in time for it. Fox writes : " The Half year's meeting began on First day of the week and lasted four days. The first and second days we had public meetings for worship, to which people of all sorts came. On the third day were the men's and women's meetings wherein the affairs of the church were taken care of" ^ He found, as Burnyeat had the year before, some " con- tentious spirits " who were making trouble. He met them face to face to consider their objections and com- plaints, and " the Lord's power broke forth gloriously, and the Truth of God was exalted and set over all." ^ On his way back from New England Fox visited Shelter Island. He had a famous meeting with the Indians on the little island. "I had a meeting," he writes, "with the Indians, at which were their king, his council, and about a hundred Indians more. They sat down like Friends and listened attentively. After meeting they appeared very loving, and confessed that what was said to them was Truth. Next First-day we had a great meeting on the island, to which came many people who had never heard Friends before. . . . They were much taken with the Truth." ^ After a very stormy passage he got to Oyster Bay, where he had " a very large meeting," and, in company with Christopher Holder and James Lancaster, he went across the Sound, " to the continent," as he calls it, and held a meeting at Rye, at that time in "Winthrop's territory " [i.e. in Connecticut) ; then to Flushing, " where we had a very large meeting, many hundreds of people being there, some of whom came about thirty miles to ' Fox's Journal, ii. 167. ^ Hid. ii. 168. There are evidences in all the Journals of the period that there were many Ranters to be found in the Colonies as there were also in England. s im_ ;;, j^^. CH.I QUAKERISM IN NEW YORK 231 it. A glorious and heavenly meeting it was," and, finally, " three precious meetings " at Gravesend.^ This work was immediately followed up and carried farther by the great colonial missionary of Quakerism, William Edmundson. 'His Journal {or 1672 says: " I took passage by sea [from Maryland] and about ten days after landed at New York where no Friends lived. We lodged at a Dutch woman's house who kept an inn. I was moved of the Lord to get a meeting in that town, for there had not been one there before.^ I spoke to the woman of the house to let us have a meeting. She let us have a large dining-room and furnished it with seats. We gave notice of it and had a brave, large meeting ! Some of the chief officers, magistrates, and leading men of the Town were at it ; very attentive they were, the Lord's power being over them all. Several of them appeared very loving after the meeting. ' The woman of the house and her daughter, both being widows, both wept when we went away." * Edmundson followed the regular Quaker route through Long Island eastward, finding " many honest, tender Friends " in the towns, and having a memorable visit with the Friends on Shelter Island, from whom he " parted in the sweet love of God " for New England. On his return journey, having " set all the town [of Hartford] a-talking of religion," he crossed to Long Island. Here he found an outbreak of Ranterism : " Friends were much troubled in their meetings with several who had gone from Truth and turned Ranters. They would come, both men and women, into Friends' meetings, singing and dancing in a rude manner which was a great exercise [annoyance] to Friends. We staid sometime and had large and precious meetings, at several places. Many of the Ranters came to the meetings and the Lord's power was over them and chained them down. Some of them were reached and brought back to the Tnith."* ^ Fox's Joumalt ii. 174. Edmundson is wrong in this statement, as Burnyeat had held one in the city before this. Edmundson's Journal, p. 64. ^ Ibid. p. 92. These Ranters apparently did not stay "chained," for Thomas Chalkley, writing in 1698 of his visit to Long Island, says: " I met with some of the people called Ranters who disturbed our meeting. I may say as the apostle Paul did, that I fought with beasts there ! " — Chalkley's7oar»a/, p. 22. 232 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. n As has already been said, there was, at least in all the northern Colonies, in the seventeenth century a large and dangerous sprinkling of Ranters. They did not originate from the Quakers, as they ante-dated the latter by some years. They were a part of a widespread, though some- what chaotic movement in England,^ and there was an out-cropping of the same tendency in America. Among the groups of Anabaptists, Seekers, and so-called " Antinomians," wherever they appeared, there formed a radical wing composed of those who were less stable mentally, less organized morally, and less under the social direction of the groups to which they belonged. The Friends, with their lack of ecclesiastical authority, and with their doctrine of the Light within, were almost certain to suffer from the Ranter propagandism, and the move- ment did pick off some of the members who were ill-balanced and easy subjects of fanaticism. The Quaker leaders had powerfully proclaimed the possibility of complete salvation from sin, and it was only to be expected that some emotional Quakers, especially such as had a strain of hysteria, would make extravagant claims. One illustration of this Ranter tendency will suffice, taken from the Annals of Newtown, Long Island. "There resided at the English Hills in Newtown several individuals holding the religious opinion of the Quakers. Among them was Thomas Case, who assumed the office of preacher, and at his house the faithful were wont to convene for worship. He set up a new form of Quakerism, and labored with great zeal to promulgate his views, not unfrequently continuing his meetings many days in succession. Inspired with a fancied holiness of his character and office he asserted that he was come to perfection and could sin no more than Christ, and he maintained that when he should die he would rise again the third day." ^ This " new sort of Quakerism," as this chronicler calls it, ran into a wild fanaticism, and these " half-Quakers " were dealt with vigorously in 1675 by the town authorities. ' See my Studies in Mystical Religion, the chapter on "Seekers and Ranters. " ^ Annals of Newtown, pp. 93-95. CH. I QUAKERISM IN NEW YORK 233 They were also vigorously dealt with by the Quaker meeting itself, as the following minute of Westbury Quarterly Meeting indicates : "At a Quarterlie Meeting ye 30th day of ye 6th mo. 1675, We ye people of God, being weightily meett in ye feare and dread of ye Lord, being much conserned in our Spirits considering a people that is arisen in this day which calleth themselves by ye name Friends. These people oppose and denye ye truth of our Lord Jesus and speak evill of his way and people, wherefore we ye people of God, being seriously meett together in ye name and feare of ye Lord, felling ye out-running of those people to be as a weight vpon vs, we, in obedience vnto god and his blessed truth, doe vnanimusly signify^ our dislike of yt spirit they are guided by and give forth our testimonies against it. Whereas those people being risen in ye pretence of ye truth in this western part of Long Island and some upon ye main, who call themselues young Friends or new friends, the leading persons of them being Thomas Case, Garsham Lockwood, Lydia ffoster, Elizabeth Cleave, with many others against whom we bear testimony for their confused practices, and have openly denied their Spirit of delusion by which they are led and guided, yet the presisting in and by ye deluding spirit and dark power wch opperates in them has bretrayed many into ye same snare wherein they become the country's discourse, wherefore we are nessecitated for ye baring of ye precious truth and for ye renouncing aspera- tions yt may arise of us cleare from owning their way or evill practices to be in or by ye Spirit or power of God, and do giue forth our public testimonies to all yt may see ye same, yt we utterly deny them and all yt joyned in those confused practices, and ye spirit and power by wch they are led and guided." ^ Two official reports of this period throw some light on the place which the Quakers held in the estimation of the Government. The first extract is from the Report of ^ Minutes of Westtury Quarterly Meeting. The following letter from Edward Taylor to Increase Mather may possibly throw a glimpse of light upon these " new Quakers," though it is more probable that the incident reported is a fiction of the imagination of minds always on the watch for signs of witchcraft and for signs that the Quakers were objects of divine disapproval. Edward Taylor writes, January 22, 1683 : " At Mattatuck, about 16 miles S.W. from Farmington, about 10 o'clock at night, there was seen by about 6 or 7 men a black streake in the skie like a rainbow. . . . About the same time it was credibly reported with us that the Quakers upon Long Island were on the Lord's day to have a horse race, and the riders mounted for the race were dismounted again by the All Righteous offended Judge striking them with tortuering pains whereof they both 6.\e.i"— Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, Part iv. vol. viii. p. 630. 234 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. n Governor Andros on the religious condition of the Province of New York in 1678, and the second extract is from a similar Report made by Governor Donegan in 1687 : " There are here Religions of all sorts, one church of England, several Presbiterians and Independents, Quakers and Anabaptists of several sects, some Jews, but Presbiterians and Independents most numerous and substantial." ^ "Here bee many of the Church of England; few Roman Catholick ; abundance of Quaker Preachers, men and women ; especially Singing Quakers, Ranting Quakers." ^ One of the most memorable and historically important of the many missionary visits to Long Island for the purpose of extending Quakerism was that of Samuel Bownas of England, a young man of twenty-five at the time of his visit in 1702. He appointed a meeting, soon after his arrival, at Hempstead in a great barn and it was attended by a crowd of people. At the instigation of George Keith, formerly a leading exponent of Quakerism, but at this time a bitter opponent of Friends,^ who had followed Bownas from Philadelphia in order to block his work, a warrant was sworn out, charging Bownas with "speaking lies and reflections against the Church of England " in his sermon at Hempstead. When the High Sheriff, accompanied by a posse of men " armed with guns, swords, pitchforks, clubs and halberts " came to arrest the prisoner, the Half-year's Meeting was in session at Flushing (29th November 1702), and Samuel Bownas was sitting in the ministers' gallery. The Sheriff marched up the aisle, pulled out his warrant, and said "You are my prisoner." After some parley the Sheriff consented to wait till meeting was over, and his men piled up their motley arms at the door and all sat down in the Quaker meeting. The " silence " at first astonished the officers of the law, but as they were beginning to whisper that Bownas ^ Governor Andros' Report on the Province of New York in 1678. — Doc. Hist. New York, i. 92. ^ Itid. i. 186, Governor Donegan's Report on the Province in 1687. The "Singing Quakers" and "Ranting Quakers" naturally made an impression, though they were certainly few in number. * For an extended treatment of Keith, see Book V. Chapter II. CH. I QUAKERISM IN NEW YORK 235 was frightened by the show of force, he felt " the Word likp a fire and stood up and had a very agreeable service." At the close of the meeting the Sheriff gave him an extension of liberty until the Half- Year's Meeting was concluded, at the last gathering of which " near two thousand people " were present. At the hearing before the Justices, Bownas was asked to give ;^2000 bail or be committed to the common jail. His answer was, " If the bail were fixed at three half-pence I would not give it." One of the Justices thereupon took him to his own house for the night, and the next day he was committed to jail for three months, at the end of which time he was brought before the court of Oyer and Terminer, Chief Justice John Bridges presiding. The grand jury refused to bring a true bill against Bownas. The judge was thereupon very angry with them and endeavoured to compel them by threats of imprisonment and fine, but one of the jurors boldly answered : " You may hang us by the heels if you please, but if you do the matter will be carried to Westminster Hall ; for juries, whether grand or petty, are not to be menaced with threats, but are to act freely." ^ The browbeating continued over to the next day, but the men remained unmoved and stood for the privilege of juries. Whereupon the judge declared in wrath, " As justice cannot be come at here, I will send the prisoner to London chained to the deck of a man-of-war." As Samuel Bownas was sitting alone, wondering what the issue of his case would be, an old man named Thomas Hicks, who had been chief-justice of the province, came to see him, took him in his arms, and with tears in his eyes said, " The Lord has used you as an instrument to put a stop to arbitrary proceedings in our courts of justice. There has never been so successful a stand made against it as at this time. You need not fear ; they can no more send you to England than they can send me." The prisoner was, however, confined, by order of the ^ The judicial decision in the Bushnell case, which arose out of the trial of Penn and Mead, had settled the law that no jury could be fined for its verdict. 236 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. n judge, in a small room made of logs, where he was kept until October 1703, and then set free because the jury again refused to find a bill against him. He had supported himself in prison by making shoes ; getting his bread, he says, " with my own hands, as was agreeable with Paul's practice." Having been held a close prisoner almost an entire year, he received " a kind of triumph " on his release, and " visited every corner of the island, and had very large and open meetings." He had an odd dream at Cowneck : " I dreamed," he says, " that an honest Friend was fishing in a large stone cistern, with a crooked pin for a hook, a small switch stick for rod, and a piece of thread for line ; and George Fox [who died twelve years before] came and told me that there - were three fishes in that place, and desired me to take the tackling of the Friend since he lacked the skill to handle the matter. Then, methought, the Friend gave me the rod, and the first time I threw in I caught a fine fish. George Fox then bade me try again, for there were two more in the place. I did and took up another. He bade me cast once more. I did and took the third. Now, said George, there are no more there ! " The next day at meeting Bownas had forgotten the dream as though it had not been. A Friend rose and spoke for a little on universal grace. As soon as he stopped, Bownas, with " his heart full of the matter," took up the same subject and landed his fish : " We had a blessed meeting and the dream came true ! " ^ Thomas Story's Journal is a valuable source of in- formation on the condition and growth of Quakerism in New York.^ He visited New York City for the first time in 1699, having "a small meeting" there. He gives us the interesting information that he "fell in opportunely with a Yearly Meeting at Westchester on the main, about twenty miles from New York." ^ He found a good many Ranters still in evidence on Long Island, one of ^ A meeting was soon after established there. The Bownas incidents are told in his Life and Travels (London, 1761), pp. 61-95. ^ Journal of Thomas Story. ' lUd, p. 177. This was evidently not a Yearly Meeting for church affairs, but a General Meeting for the purpose of "expanding Quakerism." cH. I QUAKERISM IN NEW YORK 237 whom " hooted like an owl and made a ridiculous noise as their manner is ! " ^ He had " glorious meetings " in most of the Long Island towns ; he speaks of a " Quarterly Meeting" at Westbury and one in New York City, and he held a great meeting by appointment at Westchester, " across the sound," to which " an abundance of people came from as far as Horseileck." " The people," he says, " were very still and affected with the testimony of Truth."' While they were at Newtown, a part of the present city of Brooklyn, report reached him of the " pestilential fever" which was then raging in Philadelphia. He and his companion, Roger Gill, were eager to go to their " distressed friends " in Philadelphia, but felt called before leaving to hold a meeting in New York City, where " the people seemed to have good understandings generally." The meeting was appointed at the request of Thomas Story, and was held in the house of Thomas Roberts, " a convinced man in the heart of the city." " The room was large, and all about the doors and windows were full of people," but Thomas Story got no chance to speak. " I had," he says, " a great weight and exercise on my mind, but Roger Gill stept in between and took up most of the seasonable time, till my spirit almost sunk under the load ; and while it was working up the second time after he sat down, Samuel Jenings stood up and took the rest [of the time] ; and then I totally fell under it, and was greatly oppressed in spirit, though I bore it undiscerned by any ! " ^ He came back from Philadelphia before the end of the year (1699), and had another meeting in the same house "... the concern having remained in secret," i.e. on his mind. This meeting was large and he delivered himself of his " concern," and was " fully clear and easy." * In 1702 he had "a glorious meeting in the new meeting- house " at Westbury. " Many hundreds of Friends and abundance of other people were there. The meeting being over, there came over the Plains with us at least ' Journal of Thomas story, p. 220. ^ JHd. p. 221. ' Hid. p. 222. * Hid. p. 243. 238 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. ii lOO horse to their several habitations." ^ In 1703 he was at a meeting in Westchester, " which was more open than usual in that place." Toward the end of 1704 he went to New York City, having heard that Lord Cornbury, the Governor of the Colony, was going to arrest him if he ever came into that jurisdiction again. " I was," he says, " at the Sheriff's house several times, but the Lord preserved me free to the service of the blessed Truth." ^ The Journal of James Dickinson gives a good picture of conditions in 1698 : "We crossed Amboy ferry in two canoes, which the water- men lashed together to carry our horses over. Next day we went to Elizabeth-town [New Jersey], took boat for New York, and were all night upon the water, being exposed to wind and storm : it rained all night and we had no shelter, for the boat was filled with wood and we sat upon it. About break of day we got to New York where we staid a little ; then passed over in a canoe to Long Island, and travelled up and down, laboring in the work of the gospel; and had good service for the Truth. Several were convinced, particularly a captain in the army and a justice of the peace, who were afterwards called before the Governor of New York ; and because they could neither swear nor fight any longer, they laid down their commissions, having received the Truth in the love of it. In New York City many hearts were deeply affected and tendered, both among the Dutch and English, and the Lord's power was over all." ^ Thomas Chalkley, the great Quaker traveller in the first half of the eighteenth century, was one of the fore- most instruments in the expansion of New York Quakerism. He had already visited Long Island near the close of the seventeenth century — "fighting beasts" there, — but his important visit came in 1704. He travelled by horse and canoe from North Carolina, having narrow escapes from rattlesnakes, and " Lodging like good Jacob on his way to Padan Aram. Very sweet was the love of God to my soul as I waked, and the dew of the everlasting love refreshed me." ^ ^ Journal of Thomas Story, p. 256, 2 7^2*^. p, 370. '^ Journal of Jamis Dickinson, in "Friends* Library," vol, xii. p. 393. ■* Journal of Thomas Chalkley, p. 38. cH. I QUAKERISM IN NEW YORK 239 " So we travelled on to New York and Long Island, where we had divers meetings, as at Flushing, Westbury, Jerusalem, Jerico, Bethpage, Matinicook, and also at West Chester on the main" ^ On his return journey Thomas Chalkley had large and powerful meetings again through Long Island. A still more constructive tour was made by Thomas Chalkley through the New York meetings, especially on Long Island, in 1724. Much new ground was broken, and many " were convinced of the Principle of Truth." He visited Westchester again, and held a meeting at Newtown which was so large that the meeting-house could not contain the people. He held a meeting with " those few Friends at New York — the quietest meeting I ever had there ! " ^ Edmund Peckover visited Long Island in 1743. He, however, gives only one or two concrete pictures of the actual state of things there then. He attended the Yearly Meeting at Flushing that year, and he says that " the Top Sort of people for many miles round about the country were there." He reports but few Friends in New York City, but the yellow fever was raging at the time of Peckover's visit, and he did not see the city in its normal conditions.' William Reckitt visited the meetings through this region in 1758, and his report indicates that a decline had set in on Long Island. " Lukewarmness and indifference much prevailed," he says. Again, he makes the comment that " at Oister Bay there had been a large meeting, but now it was much declined." * The last account which I shall give of conditions in the Colony in the eighteenth century shows that crystallisation was settling down upon Quakerism, and that the period of expansion was over. It is from the Journal of John Griffith of England, who visited the New York meetings in 1765 : "Quarterly Meeting at Flushing (22nd of Fifth Month) was small, and things, as to the life of religion, were felt to be very ' Journal of Thomas Chalkley, p. 39. ^ Itid. pp. 118-120. ' For Peckover's Journal see Journal of Friends' Historical Society, vol. i. pp. 95-109. ^ William Recldtfs Life, pp. 120-121. 240 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. n low, a painful gloominess having spread itself through a want of living concern in many of the members . . . the vital part of religion seemed to be much obstructed." ^ Griffith's Journal introduces us to a number of new meetings, which had been established by migration and expansion, like a chain of forts, running north from Long Island Sound, parallel to the Hudson, between the river and the Connecticut line, but he sees almost everywhere the marks of deadness : "We went to New Milford meeting [in the Edge of Connecticut] on Firstday the 3rd of Eighth month. I had nothing to offer in the way of ministry. After meeting we ascended to the Oblong, and a long ascent it was, to the summit' of the hill, called Quaker Hill [on the New York side of the line]. We had a very large meeting at a commodious house built by Friends on that hill. They who attended were generally professors of the truth, and mostly ' plain ' and becom- ing in their outward garb ; yet, alas ! when they came to be viewed in the true light they appeared dry and formal, many, I fear, having clothed corrupted nature with a form of religion, and in a ' plain ' dress sit in their religious meetings like dead images. "We had a large meeting at the Nine Partners [East of Poughkeepsie] and we had a painful afflicting meeting at Oswego. On First day, the loth of Eighth month, we were at the Oblong meeting again ; my travail through the entire meeting was in suffering silence. We had meetings [travelling south] at Peach-Pond, North Castle, Purchase, Mamarineck, and West Chester. On Firstday the 17 th we were at two meetings in the city of New York. I had a good deal of satisfaction among Friends in this city, and / hope there is a growth in best things." ^ Our next chapter will show this Quakerism of New York more from the inside, and we shall see what it was as its own records reveal its activities. The material for the present chapter has been drawn almost entirely from outside sources, especially from Public Records and the Journals of visiting ministers. We have seen these little societies of Friends spring up and grow in the towns of Long Island, in New York ^ Journal of John Griffith (London, 1779), p. 393. ^ Ibid. pp. 408-411. cH. I QUAKERISM IN NEW YORK 241 City, and northward along the chain of hills back of the Hudson. We have seen them confronted, first by the fierce hostility of an established religion ; next by the more subtle danger of Ranterism, which picked off the fringe of less stable members ; and, finally, we have seen these groups facing the subtlest of all enemies to religion, the tendency to cool off, stagnate, and become the crystallised reproduction of an ancestral faith. There was, however, from the beginning to the end of the period a real spring of vitality which will appear more clearly in the next chapter. Their own estimate of their condition, made in 1680, is on the whole sound and true : "Through patience and quietness," the New York Friends wrote to London Yearly Meeting, "we have overcome in and through the Lamb, and we have found of a truth that the Lord takes care of his people. Our testimonies go forth without any hindrance and return unto us not wholly empty, but have their fruitful workings both upon Dutch and English nations. In a sense of this our hearts rejoice in the Lord for that His holy light of life breaketh through the darkness as the dawning of the day." There is nothing better in this world of ours than a people living in and practising the faith that the holy light of life is breaking through the darkness as the dawn- ing of the day ! CHAPTER II NEW YORK QUAKERISM — ITS MEETINGS AND ACTIVITIES The external husk of any religious movement is obvious and describable, the inner core is indescribable, and is missed by all except those who are initiated. The garb and language, the external peculiarities, and the odd " testi- monies " of the Colonial Quakers struck most observers. The novel experience, the fresh sense of God which had come to them, was what the casual onlooker failed to understand, and yet this was in reality the only thing that mattered — it was the inner core. The meeting for worship which was held for the very purpose of cultivating this fresh sense of God was thus the heart of the whole Quaker system. All religions which move men profoundly and make them able to endure the world's crucifixions have some method of bringing God and man together in a face to face experi- ence. The Quaker method was extremely simple, but, at its best, powerfully effective. It called for no material apparatus and it made use of no sacred symbols. It consisted alone of the hushing of the noise and din of the outer activities of life. Its supreme and central axiom was the faith that God is Spirit and so as near the human spirit as air is to the breathing lungs or sunlight to the living plant. But as this spiritual relationship is a personal matter it calls for a peculiar attitude of will, or, in the language of an earlier time, a certain condition of heart God, the Quaker assumed, did not need to be brought nearer ; man alone needed to be adjusted and made 242 cH. 11 MEETINGS AND ACTIVITIES 243 appreciative. He could no more find God when he was full of himself and of the world, than one can enjoy beautiful music with his mind crowded with the whirr of factory wheels. He must be hushed and attuned. Just this hushing and attuning was the service of the meeting for worship. Those who formed the nucleus of the Quaker group were thoroughly tired of theological arguments and of sermons which began and ended on the level of logic — or "knowledge about." They wanted a new approach. They were eager for a direct " knowledge of acquaintance " — an experience which made their hearts burn with a sense of the Divine Presence, and they found this in the meeting for worship. We know to-day much more than they did of the psychology of corporate silence, and there can be no doubt that there is a " borderland " state of consciousness produced by unbroken silence in which the deepest strata of the self come into function in ways not usual to the normal consciousness. If it is true, as I believe, that the Divine and the human are conjunct, then it is further true that the corporate silence is an admirable preparation for spiritual correspondence. But, in any case, it is beyond question that these meetings for worship made those who participated in them feel sure that they had been meeting and communing with God, and they were, therefore, very dynamic occasions, and the members believed that they had found, in the hard surroundings of pioneer life, a real " upper room " religion. In its earliest stage on Long Island, as everywhere else in the colonies, Quakerism was primarily a method of worship. Its organisation was very slight indeed. Those who found a new life in the meetings for worship risked reputation, goods, and life to go to them, and, in doing so, they were thereby Quakers. Certain marked habits, which had almost unconsciously formed in the Quaker groups, would naturally be quickly taken up, such as the use of "thou and thee" in speech, the refusal to conform to fashion in dress, the scruple about oaths, and the care to avoid everything that had to do with war. There formed. 244 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. n too, gradually of course, a certain disposition, or mental " atmosphere," which characterised a Quaker of the inner circle as much as his dress or speech did. Its leading feature was a bloom of joy which came into the life with assurance of salvation and confidence in the love of God. There were, no doubt, Quakers of hard faith and stern face, but the tone of character which goes with conscious- ness of fellowship with God was the usual mark. Little by little, here as in the other colonies, the organisation took on shape and grew defined. The influence of George Fox upon the formation of the colonial meetings in the early period is everywhere clearly evident, and the earliest Records generally open with an epistle from him. The earliest minute in the New York Records runs : "At a men's Meet ye 23 day of 3d month 167 1. It was agreed yt ye first dayes Meetings be on one day at Oyster bay and another day at Matinacock ; and ye weekly Meeting to begin about ye first houre in ye afternoon. It was allso agreed ther shall bee a Meeting keept at the wood edge [Westbury] the 25 of the 4th month and see every 5th first Day of the week." ' This is the earliest extant minute of a Friends' meeting in America and is probably the earliest one written on the continent. John Burnyeat who attended this meeting in 1671 brought with him a minute-book which George Fox had sent to Long Island Friends by his hand. The above minute is followed by a letter of advice from George Fox which begins with his usual salutation, "In the Truth of God which changes not in whom is my love." He then reminds his distant Friends that " there hath been [among them] a stoppage of ye truth and power of God," and that they need to be " searched to ye bottom " and so " come into ye sanctified life " — and for this purpose he calls for a careful examination of the persons who claim to be Friends, and a winnowing of those who walk unworthily 1 This Book of Minutes was discovered in a garret at Flushing in 1868 and is in the vault in the Meeting House at Rutherford Place, New York, John Cox, junior, custodian. cH.ii MEETINGS AND ACTIVITIES 245 and are in "the rotten principle of ye ranters." He urges further a careful collection of the list of sufferings endured in " the plantation." From this time on, the organisation, for purposes of order and for purposes of relief, gradually progressed.^ There is an interesting link of connection between the Long Island Friends and those in New England to be found in an epistle of Advice from the latter to the former in 1679 : " Dear friends, ye know that the Lord God of heaven hath appeared and manifested His mighty power which hath reached unto thousands and hath redeemed many out of nations, tongues, kindreds, and peoples to be a peculiar people, and hath taught us by His holy Spirit to denie ye customs, fashions and words of ye world. ... It lieth upon us, ye people of God assembled together at ye Men and Women's Meeting in Road Island, to stir up ye minds in one another that ye principles of ye blessed truth be allwaise stood in and continued for that God over all may be honoured and his people preserved in purity and good order in ye truth that changeth not, that soe they may be preachers of Righteousness unto ye world in their words and actions." The " Advice " which follows this salutation is an interesting revelation of the things which seemed to the early Friend of greatest moment. No Friend is to " walk disorderly in anything " ; nor to live in any way " not according to Truth " ; " nor to oppress or defraud any man in his dealings " ; no one is to " weare needless attire" and all Friends are to "indever to bring up their children to use plaine language and weare plaine and deasent cloathing and demeane them in all things according to ye truth which we make profession of." ^ At this earliest stage the records do not sharply mark offone type of meeting from another — "a men's meeting" ' John Bowne, John Tilton, Samuel Spicer, and Samuel Andrews, who were in the list of Friends addressed in the Epistle, were the leaders in the group of Long Island Quakers. John Feake, Hugh Cowperthwait and Anthonie Wright may also be mentioned among those of largest influence. ^ "Given forth at a Generall Man and Women's Meeting at William Coddington's at Road Island ye 12th of ye 4lh mo. 1679." — First Book of Records of Flushing Monthly Meeting. 246 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. n may be a " monthly meeting," or a " quarterly meeting," or a "half-years meeting." Little by little, however, two types did differentiate, and there were formed Flushing Monthly Meeting and Westbury Quarterly Meeting which in the spring and autumn sessions was frequently called, though not officially, " Oysterbay Half Years Meeting " — all of which " belonged " to New England Yearly Meeting until 1696, when New York Yearly Meeting was estab- lished as an independent body.'' The two Monthly Meetings composing Westbury Quarterly Meeting appear to have been established, and regularly held by the year 1682, as the following minutes of the Quarterly Meeting held in 6th month 1682 indicate : " Ffriends of ye Monthly Meeting of New York and Gravesend [Flushing Monthly Meeting] doe agree yt ye Monthly Meetbg is to be keept at Yorke two months following & ye 3d at Gravesend, the first Meeting at Gravesend to be ye first fourth day in the 6th mo. & soe sucksesifly." " Friends at this Meeting hath left unto ye consideration of ^ It was set off from New England Yearly Meeting by the following minute : " At a Generall Yearly Meeting at ye house of Walter Newberry's in Road Island ye 14th daye of ye 4th mo. 1695. ... It is Agreed yt [that] ye Meeting at Long Island Shall Bee from this time a Yearly Meeting and yt John Bowne and John Rodman shall take care to Receive such papers as shall come to ye Yearly Meeting in Long Island and Corespond with Friends Appoynted in London. ..." The first session was on 3rd month [May] 29, 1696, and it has met every year since in the latter part of the same month. ' ' At the Yearly Meeting at our Meeting house in fflushing ye 30th ye 3d mo. 1696 Henry Willis and Hen Coperthwaite are by this Meeting desired to get a release for ye title of our Meeting house and Land belonging and bring it to our next Meeting." This was the first session of what is new called New York Yearly Meeting. It was then generally called the Yearly Meeting held at Flushing. By the following minutes of the Yearly Meeting it appears that Westbury Quarterly Meeting was held three times in the year and that the Yearly Meeting took its place in the fourth quarter. ' ' Whereas this Meeting is now Concluded to be a Yearly Meeting and not a Quarterly one it is Thought Proper that the order of the state of Meetings or anything else from the Monthly Meetings of Flushing and Westbury be first carryed into the Quarterly Meeting at Westbiu-y in the Twelfth Month and from thence Recommended unto this Meeting until Friends see cause to order it otherways. " Westbury Quarterly Meeting was composed of two Monthly Meetings: Flushing Monthly Meeting (later called New York), and Westbury Monthly Meeting, established in 1682 and held at Oyster Bay, Matinecock, Hempstead, and Jericho. CH. II MEETINGS AND ACTIVITIES 247 Friends at ye Monthly Meeting at Oyster bay ye sattling of ye Meeting of Friends at ye farms & at woodedg whether it be conventient or not for them to be in two settled Meetings or not." The "farms" was the early name of Jericho and "Wood edge" was Westbury. The following Minute settles still more definitely the jurisdiction of Flushing Monthly Meeting : "The 20th day of ye 3d mo. 1684 : Then agreed by Friends at this Meeting yt ffriends at Yorke, Gravesend, and Flushing and Westchester, ye Kills, and Newton doe all belong unto one Monthly Meeting to remain at Gravesend at ye 4th mo. Quarterly Meeting and soe to continue by their own appointing wt place they see convenient after." It was always held at Flushing from 1695 till 8 mo. 6, 1742 then Flushing and Newtown until 6 mo. ist, 1768 then Flushing, Newtown, and New York until II mo. I, 1780, after which it was not held at Newtown. The name was changed to the Monthly Meeting of Friends of New York 7 mo. i, 1795. The plan for the holding of the Quarterly Meeting was marked out as follows in 1686 : " At our Quarterly Meeting at Jericho on Long Island this 27th day of ye 12 mo. 1685-6 : By Joynt Consent of said men and women's Meeting for regulating our Quarterly Meeting for most Conveniency it is thought fitt and Vnanimously Agreed for the futur ye said Meetings shall be at such times and places as here Vnder Nominated. " Vizt : Att Flushing a Quarterly Meeeting the last first day of the third month. Att Oyster Bay the last 7th and ist day of the Sixth month. Att Flushing the last 7th and ist day of the ninth month. Att Jericho the last 7th and ist day of ye 12 mo. Att Westchester a Yearly Meeting for worship the last first day in ye 4 mo. Att ye Kills the last first day of the 5 mo. Att Jameca ye last first day of ye 7 mo." ^ The important " business " of all these meetings in their primitive period was (i) dealing with persons who got entangled in " the ranting spirit " which swept Long Island in the 'seventies and to the end of the century ; ' Quarterly Meeting Records. 248 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. n (2) guarding the high moral standard which the Friends had set themselves to maintain, and (3) preserving the peculiar Quaker " testimonies." A specimen minute under each of these heads will indicate how these internal problems were met. The first is a minute concerning a certain Thomas Phillips who had developed " a ranting spirit " : " And now, dear friends, this may let you understand yt a few months since there arrived at this island one Thomas Phillips who as he sd was formerly a liver at Oyster Bay, he being a hatter by trade, who when he was here in sum small time sought to thrust himself amongst Friends, he being as we afterwards perceived in need of money. But some of ye Friends w* whome he first came acquainted not liking his discourse, he setting up ye Ranting Spirit and its followers who goe vnder ye name of new friends, a Friend now living in this Island (by name John Brown who formerly was banished to some of those parts and had some knowledge of those people) did desire to speak with him believing that he was one of them in their spirit wch. he in five words persaued soe, and warned him to come out of it. But he still frequented our Meetings and growing more subtil and crafty, did frequently in company of some weak Friends, as their manner is, beguile them." He was finally induced to " give forth a paper," con- demning his errors, " but it was much too short in several respects," and so did not satisfy the Monthly Meeting, which proceeded to give its testimony against all "dis- orderly ways " of life, and a call to its members to " walk in the everlasting way of holiness — the King's highway — and to be kept by the Lord alwaise of sound judgment and right understanding in things that are of greatest weight and concernment." ^ The way Friends followed up the doings of their members and scrutinised their reputations is well illustrated by this Minute sent from Westbury Quarterly Meeting to Friends in the Island of Jamaica : " ffrom our Quarterly Meeting at Flushing ye 30th day of ye 6th mo. 1678 : We having been informed at this Meeting by ^ First Book of Records under date sth mo. 29, 1680. CH. n MEETINGS AND ACTIVITIES 249 our friend Rob. Story yt one John Inyon, a marchant in New York, exclaimed against Friends after this manner : saying the greatest cheats in the world goe under the name of Quakers. His reason being demanded he said he consigned a vessell to one William Shattlewood and to another man in Jemica which he called Quakers, and he saith they will give him no account of his concerns [consignments]. These are to desire Friends to examine ye matter and write to us, if any Friends have received anythings we would have them give an account how disposed of, that we may have something to answer him. These with our deare love.''^ Dorothy Farrington's " case " is an illustration of the third type of " business " : "The 8th of ye loth mo. 1676: At a men and women Meeting in ye house of Matthew Prior at Killingworth [later called Matinecock] it was agreed on in ye Meeting that such as could find anything upon them shall go vnto Dorety ffarington of fflushing and speake unto her in love and in ye meekness to know whether she will owne judgment for her walking and acting contrary unto ye truth in taking a husband of ye world and not in unity of Friends." ^ There is a very fine early minute explaining to the Governor of the Colony why Friends cannot help build the fort in New York harbour, and this minute well presents the way in which the Friends put their testi- monies before those in authority : "To ye Gouernor of New Yorke. " Whereas it was desired of ye country that all who would willingly contribute towards repairing ye fort of New Yorke ' First Book of Records under date 6th mo. 30, 1678. - First Book of Records. A bill concerning marriages was passed by the Legislature in 1684 which provided that "nothing in this Act Shall be Con- straed or intended to prejudice the Custome and manner of marriages amongst the Quakers, but their manner and forme of marriages shall be judged Lawful ; pro- vided they Admitt of none to marry that are restrained by the law of God contained in the five books of Moses." Here is a humble apology from Daniel Lawrence which is quite of the common type: " To the Monthly Meeting at Flushing ye 3rd sth mo. 1716. Friends in as much as I have made profession of ye Blessed truth with you which would preserued and kept me out of the many Euils that are in the world but I raust say that with sorrow of hart I haue giuen way to An ary Spirit and too much joyning myself in fellowship with men of libertine spirits and alsoe in that insuit- able frame of minde made sute upon account of marriage with one that was not a Friend or Friend's child the which actions I doe with censerity condemn and hoop tor time to come to be more carefuU and sircumspect so 1 shall subscribe myself your friend who desires to doe well and hue in vnity with friends for time 'ocome. Daniel Lawrence. " 250 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. n would give in their names and summes ; and we whose names are under written not being found on the list. It was since desired by ye High Sheriff yt we would giue our reasons unto ye Gouernor how willing and ready we have been to pay our customs as County raytes and needful towne charges and how we haue behaued our Selues Peaceibly and quietly Amongst our Neighbours ; and are ready to be seruisable in anything which doth not Infringe upon our tender consciences but being in measure Redeemed of warres and stripes we cannot for conscience' sake be concerned in vpholding things of yt nature as you your- selves well know. It hath not not been our practice in Old England since we were a people ; and this in meekness we declare. In behalfe of ourselves and our ffriends, loue and good will vnto thee and all men. John Tilton. Saml. Andrews. John Bowne. Matt. Prver. Saml. Spicer. John Vnderhill. John Richardson. John Feke. "fflushing ye 30th of ye loth month 1672." Westbury Quarterly Meeting was the only quarterly meeting in the colony until the year 1745, when Purchase Quarterly Meeting (often called " Oblong Quarterly Meeting " and sometimes " the Quarterly Meeting on the Main ") was established. It was the only quarterly meeting " on the main " within the period of this history.'^ It was composed of Purchase Monthly Meeting and Oblong Monthly Meeting. Purchase Monthly Meeting was established June 9, 1725, and was the first monthly meeting " on the main " — the third in the Province — and was in its early period generally called the " Monthly Meeting for Westchester." ^ Oblong 1 Nine Partners Quarterly Meeting was established nth month, 13th, 1783. ^ The opening Minute reads as follows : — ' ' Whereas our last Yearly Meeting at Flushing did consent and appoint a Mounthly Meeting to be held at Westchester for this county of Westchester, accordingly we are met to hold our Mounthly Meeting this 9th day, 4th month, 1725. Being present the most part of Friends of Westchester, of Mamreneck and Rye. " It would seem to have been generally held at the Meeting-house at Westchester till 7th month 12, 1728, then "at the house of Josiah Quinby" at Mamaroneck till loth month 11, 1739, when the meeting-house was built in Mamaroneck. It was held for the first time at Purchase in 3rd month 1742, and thereafter for some years twice at Mamaroneck and once at Purchase, preceding each Quarterly Meeting, and later was held every other time at Chappaqua till that was set off as a separate Monthly Meeting in 1785. cH. II MEETINGS AND ACTIVITIES 251 Monthly Meeting was set off from Purchase Monthly Meeting, and was established in 1744. In 1769 a monthly meeting was set off from Oblong and established as "Nine Partners Monthly Meeting," and in 1778 Saratoga Monthly Meeting (later called Easton) was established, which brings us to the end of the period covered in this volume." ^ ' For exhibiting to the reader the localities in which Quakerism took root I add a list of the local, or ' ' Preparative, " meetings established up to the year 1780 : — Flushing Meeting dates from 1657, though it was perhaps not a regular congregational meeting until 1662. Westbury Meeting (first called the Meeting at Woodedge) goes back into the 'sixties though the first official mention is 4th month 25, 1671. Matinecock Meeting was probably a regular congregational meeting in the 'sixties, though the first mention on the Records is 167 1. Jekicho Meeting (in the earliest accounts called the "Farms Meeting") dates also from the 'sixties. Cow Neck Meeting also has a long period without official Records, but is first officially named in 1702. New York City Meeting cannot be definitely dated, but is first officially settled in 1681. Newtown Meeting (sometimes called "the Kills," and sometimes Maspeth) has a long unrecorded period, but is first officially named in 1682. Westchester Meeting goes back to 1684, but was officially established as a Preparative Meeting in 1716. Mamaroneck Meeting established as a meeting for worship 1711, as a Preparative Meeting in 1728. Purchase Meeting, originally part of Westchester Meeting, but made an independent Preparative Meeting in 1742. Oblong Preparative Meeting established 1742. Chappaqua Meeting was allowed in 1745, and a few years later was made a Preparative Meeting. Nine Partners Meeting (Meeting for worship first called "Crumelbow" in 1742) established a Preparative Meeting in 1744. New Milford Meeting (a meeting for worship probably as early as 1733) established as Preparative Meeting in 1777. Oswego Preparative Meeting established 1758. Peach Pond Meeting (a meeting for worship as early as 1760) established a Preparative Meeting in 1779. Poughquaig (sometimes spelled "Appoughquage" and sometimes "Poquage" was a meeting for worship in 1771) established a Preparative Meeting 1773. East Hoosac Meeting (in Western Massachusetts) was begun as a meeting for worship in 1774, and became a part of Saratoga Monthly Meeting about 1775- It was established a Monthly Meeting in 1778. Amawalk Meeting established a Preparative Meeting to be held once a quarter in 1774 — a meeting for worship some years earlier, probably in 1766. Creek Meeting established as a Preparative Meeting of Nine Partners Monthly Meeting in 1776 — a meeting for worship in the house of Jonathan Hoag in 1771. Saratoga Meeting, a meeting for worship in 1774, a Preparative Meeting in 1776. Cornwall Meeting, a meeting for worship in 1773 — a Preparative Meeting in 1777. Marlborough Meeting, a meeting for worship in 1776, a Preparative Meeting in 1783. 252 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. n The most illuminating glimpse we get into the actual life of Quakerism in this Colony in its early period is offered us in an Epistle which these Friends sent to London Yearly Meeting in 1 70 1 . There is no " doctrine " in it, and no attempt is made to analyze the religious condition of the Colony but a brief extract will show that there did prevail at this date a fairly live type of Christianity in the Quaker group. It reads : " Dear Friends in our Lord Jesus Christ : In that Love which comes from God and in which we are united, we dearly salute you in true brotherly kindness. We signify unto you the prosperity of Truth amongst us to the Joy of our Souls. The Lord is giving an increase daily to Friends and many are added to the number of the Lord's people, and the people round about where Friends dwell increase in love to Friends and frequently come to Friends meetings — especially when the Lord sends His servants [in the ministry] to visit us. We pray our gracious and merciful God that we may walk worthy of his Love and that the Lord may continue his tender regard to us in sending His servants filled with His power and wisdom. The government is kind to Friends and we enjoy our liberty." ^ These " servants of God filled with power and wisdom " did continue to come, as the writers of this Epistle prayed, and there is an amazing list of such itinerant ministers on the records of the various meetings. In fact the one weakness which comes out clearly in this Epistle is the indication of the poverty of the native ministry and the dependence for ministry on visitors from abroad. There was no effort whatever made to develop ministry within Bedford Meeting, ' ' allowed " in 1777 by Purchase Monthly Meeting ' ' for Friends who live remote from Amawalk. " There were also "house" meetings "allowed" at the following places: An "allowed meeting" at Hempstead every five weeks beginning in 1765; at Huntington, allowed by Westbury Monthly Meeting in 1732 ; at Rockaway allowed by Westbury Monthly Meeting in 1739 ; at Setauket allowed by Westbury Monthly Meeting in 1762. 3/3/1744. — "The Monthly Meeting of the Oblong desired the approba- tion of this Meeting in settling a Visitation. Meeting at Salisbury to be kept at Joshua White's twice in a year, one on the 3d day of the week before ye Monthly Meeting at ye Nine Partners in the 3d month, and the other on the 3d day of the week before said Monthly Meeting in the 7th month, which this Meeting having had under consideration doth approve of." (Minutes of Purchase Quarterly Meeting. ) ' Yearly Meeting Records for 1701. CH.II MEETINGS AND ACTIVITIES 253 the body. It was looked upon as something wholly in the inscrutable will of God, who conferred or withheld His gifts as He would. This ignoring of the human element was one of the most costly blunders which Friends made, not only in New York but everywhere else, and there is no question that the sporadic character of the ministry was a forbidding aspect to most persons outside the membership. An attempt was made in a feeble way in 1 704 to meet this condition of weakness. It was decided by action of the Westbury Quarterly Meeting, November 25, 1704, that a meeting should be held every three months for " all who minister in public speaking in meetings for worship " and that " faithful Friends out of each meeting be joined with them." This came to be called " the meeting for ministering Friends," and was primarily designed for the " encouragement " of the development of gifts. If some plan had here been matured for the cultivation and development of " spiritual gifts " the story of Quakerism would have been very different But the policy of timidity prevailed, and the meeting of ministers gradually and somewhat uncon- sciously became the guardian of " soundness " and the defender of ancient standards, rather than the nursery of vital ministry. It was composed naturally of those who were far past middle life, who had travelled away from the enthusiasm and creative power of youth, and who could not think or act in fresh and constructive ways. The result was that " the meeting of ministering Friends " became a solid force for the status quo, and did little or nothing for a genuine development of fresh and vital ministry. Such ministry did arise occasionally out of the meetings themselves, as we shall see, and sometimes a powerful voice appeared, but the development of a " gift " was not because of the preparation made for its develop- ment, but rather notwithstanding the obstacles which existed.' There were, it is true, special meetings held for ^ I find considerable evidence that "the meeting of ministering Friends " was occupied largely with checking rather than encouraging. There are many minutes like the following : "At a Meeting of Ministering ffriends at ye house of Samuel Bowne in 254 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. ii " youth," but they were " youth's meetings " only in name, for all the members attended them, and the point of difference between them and ordinary meetings seems to have been that the youth were urged to " be faithful." Gifts did, however, appear and develop in spite of the neglect of methods to cultivate them. In 1745 a boy was born at Cow Neck on Long Island and named David Sands. He educated himself, studying often by firelight, and grew up a diligent, eager-minded, spiritually-inclined youth. As he was entering early manhood he attended a Friends' Meeting at which Samuel Nottingham, an English minister, spoke, and the message reached his spirit and powerfully impressed him. He became an attender of the Quaker Meetings on the Island and later in New York City, and found in them what his spirit was seriously seeking — a religion which seemed to him real. He soon moved to the country and joined in membership in the meeting at Nine Partners, where he often broke the silence with simple messages. His words were felt by the little group of Friends with whom he belonged to be full of life, and little by little, as he obeyed his Light, his power to interpret the spiritual meaning of life enlarged. By the time he had reached his thirtieth year he was recorded a minister, and almost immediately began his remarkable travels through New England, expanding the sphere of Quakerism wherever he went. Later he travelled extensively in Great Britain and on the fRushing 28th 9 mo. 1712, ffriends at this meeting, having wayed ye inconvenience of some coming amonge us from other parts without certificates and appearing in publick to preach, hath appointed John Rider and Robert Heald out of fflushing Meeting, and William Willis and Henry Cock out of Westbury Monthly Meeting, to inquire of all such for a certificate as they shall think need may Require." ' * At a meeting of Ministering ffriends held at ye house of ye Widdow Willis'es at Jereco, Robert Heald Declared at this meeting that he was sorry and Troubled for his accompanying his sister Charety Willet in going home with her to her new Dwelling She being married the day before out of ye unity of ffriends ; ye said Robert declaring his sense of it was not well, with wch ye Meeting was satisfied." ' ' ffrom our Meeting of Ministering ffriends and Elders ye 25th of ye 3 mo. 1728 at the Meeting house in fflushing, this Meeting having considered this complaint that hath been made from Westchester County of Richard Rogers appearing in publick preaching in their said Publick Meetings to their Grief. This Meeting hath advised him by this present Instrument to forbear for the time to com so to appeare in Publick until ffriends have unity." cH. II MEETINGS AND ACTIVITIES 255 Continent of Europe, speaking under diverse and often difficult circumstances with much penetration and insight, and exhibiting a very simple and genuine life of real religious experience. The few glimpses that are given in his Memoirs of his interpretation of inward religion show that he had a sure grasp of the seed-principle of the founders of Quakerism. He says that though we live far separated in time from the miracles of the apostolic period, we lack in no sense a convincing evidence of the divine character of Christianity, since there is an internal testimony to the Gospel of Christ in the heart of every one that receives it — the Spirit of God witnesseth with bur Spirits, the changed heart becomes the house of God, revelation proves to be a present and continuous fact, and the soul has its own altar within.^ This case of the normal and effective spiritual develop- ment of David Sands is by no means an isolated case ; such instances of the blowing of the Spirit as it listed are fairly frequent, but the fact remains that David Sands himself was, throughout his life, hampered by the way in which his human development was neglected, and by the lack of adequate method tor the cultivation of what in his case was a very remarkable gift. If the Friends did not always handle their internal affairs with what seems to us at this far date to have been "wisdom," they had, at any rate, a sure insight when they attacked moral issues. The most massive moral problem, here, as in the other colonies, was slavery, and as soon as the evils of the system impressed the consciousness of Friends they grappled manfully with the issue — first clearing their own skirts and then endeavour- ing to cleanse the country itself. The awakening to a consciousness of the evil did not come until after the middle of the eighteenth century.^ The " awakening " was almost certainly due to the visit of John Woolman- — a " beloved disciple " of liberty whose conscience was as ' Memoirs of David Sands (i74S-r8iS), London, 1848. ^ The Half Year's Meeting on Long Island, 14th October 1684, appointed John Bowne and Wm. Richardson to raise money "on cheap terms " to supply to John Adams ' ' part payment for a Negro man that he hath lately bought. " 256 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. h sensitive to social evils as mercury is to temperature. He travelled among the Friends of New York Colony in 1 760, and there came a powerful moral uprising against the evil of slave-holding almost directly after that date. The sentiment was at least well developed by the middle of that decade. Flushing Monthly Meeting dealt in 1765 with Samuel Underhill for the "misconduct of being concerned in importing negroes." He made the following apology which was accepted : " Whereas I have sometime past contrary to Friends Principles been concerned in the importation of Negroes from Africa, which has caused some uneasiness in my mind, I think I can now say I am sorry I ever had any concern in that Trade, and hope for the future I shall conduct myself more agreeable to Friends principles in any such matters ; I am your friend, etc.— Saml. Underhill." A similar apology came from a Friend in New York City two years later, the record of which is as follows : "At a Monthly Meeting held at Flushing the 7th of ye 5th mo. 1767. A few lines was read in this Meeting from Thomas Burling, son of James Burling deceased, acknowledging he had taken a Negro boy in the West Indies for a bad debt and therein did condemn the practice of trading in negroes and was sorry for the breach of unity made thereby which this Meeting accepts." 1 The country Friends were travelling rather faster than the Friends who were living in the environment of the city, and the next step in advance was taken by the meetings in Dutchess county. Friends were, by this time, pretty generally agreed that it was wrong to buy or import slaves, but in 1767 Oblong Monthly Meeting raised the question whether it was " consistent with a Christian spirit" to hold a person in slavery at all. This question impressed the members as being in the life, and it was carried up to the Quarterly Meeting for maturer judgment. It was thoroughly, or, as Friends say, "weightily" considered at Purchase Quarterly Meeting, ' Both these incidents are taken from the Records of Flushing Monthly Meeting. cH. 11 MEETINGS AND ACTIVITIES 257 held in the Oblong, May 2, 1767, and this Minute was adopted : " In this meeting the practice of trading in Negroes, or other slaves, and its inconsistancy with our religious principles was revived, and the inconsiderable difference between buying slaves or keeping them in slavery we are already possessed of, was briefly hinted at in a short Query from one of our Monthly Meetings, which is recommended to the consideration of Quarterly Meeting, viz. If it is not consistant with Christianity to buy and sell our fellow-men for Slaves during their lives, and their posterity after them, whether it is consistant with a Christian Spirit to keep these in Slavery that we have already in possession, by purchase, gift, or other ways." This " Query " from the Quarterly Meeting came up for consideration in the Yearly Meeting, May 30th of the same year, and was " left for consideration on the minds of Friends until next Yearly Meeting." At the next Yearly Meeting (May 28, 1768) a committee, consisting of John Burling, Thomas Seaman, John Cock, Isaac Doty, Matthew Franklin, Thomas Franklin, Samuel Bowne, Jr., Thomas Dobson, and Daniel Bowne, was appointed to formulate an answer. These men were not yet quite ready for the speed at which the country Friends were travelling, and they produced a conservative, but at the same time a very clear-sighted, report, which was adopted. It was as follows : "We are of the mind that it is not convenient (considering the circumstances amongst us) to give an answer to this Querie, at least at this time, as the answering of it in direct terms manifestly tends to cause divisions, and may introduce heart- burnings and strife amongst us which ought to be avoided, and charity exercised, and persuasive methods persued, and that which makes for peace. We are, however, fully of the mind that Negroes as rational creatures are by Nature born free ; and when the way opens liberty ought to be extended to them ; and they not held in bondage for self ends. But to turn them out at large indiscriminately (which seems to be the tendency of the Querie) will, we apprehend, be attended with great inconveniency ; as some are too young and some too old to procure a liveli- hood."! ' Minutes of New York Yearly Meeting for 1768. 258 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk.ii It was the unvarying custom of Friends in the colonial days not to take any new step which could not be taken in unity. That involved fairly slow progress, but it also meant that the corporate body was behind a movement when it was positively launched. In 1771 the Yearly Meeting decided that Friends who owned slaves should not sell them as property, except with the consent of their Monthly Meetings, and a solid committee was appointed to visit all persons in the Society who held slaves, to see if the freedom of these slaves could be secured. This method of investigation was speedily adopted by the subordinate meetings as well, so that by 1776 all the monthly meetings in the colony were investigating the individual cases of slave-holding, and were labouring to eliminate it absolutely. It was decided further at the Yearly Meeting that year (1776) that meetings should not receive services nor accept financial contributions from any Friends holding slaves, and from that time on the Monthly Meetings adopted the practice of disowning from membership those belated Friends who had not yet got their consciences awake to the evil of owning persons. From the outbreak of the Revolution Friends began to concentrate their efforts to secure better conditions for those who had been slaves, and to work first for the limitation and then for the abolition of the slave trade in the country at large. The part which Friends took in the great struggle for emancipation does not concern us here, but it is a fact of historical importance that when the separation of the colonies from the mother country was finally accomplished. Friends themselves were free and clear of slave-holding.^ ' The Meeting for Sufferings of New York sent this following Petition to the Governor, Senate, and Assembly of the State in 1784 : ' ' The Petition of the Meeting for Sufferings representing the People called Quakers of the same State : " Respectfully sheweth ' ' That our minds being impressed with an ardent concern for the general good of our fellow-creatures, and that all may enjoy their natural and unalienable rights without distinction, we believe it to be our duty to address you on behalf of the poor Negroes, who have long been a people under great oppression, many of them originally torn from the land of their nativity ; and brought into this and cH. II MEETINGS AND ACTIVITIES 259 Here as everywhere else in the American colonies the Revolutionary War brought Friends face to face with issues which profoundly tested their principles of peace and which necessarily somewhat sifted the Society. The Meeting for Sufferings in this Province was established in 1758 and this Meeting dealt with many difficult questions, rising out of the war. The tendency of the Society in New York seems to have been one of sympathy with the old order of things, though every possible effort was made to keep the meetings from being implicated on either side. In 1775 the Committee of Safety for the Colony of New York requested a complete list of male Quakers between sixteen and sixty. Friends " felt uneasy" to make the list, and the Meeting for Sufferings refused the request. The Minute reads : "We are of the mind that we cannot comply, consistent with our religious principles. We hope you will not consider such refusal as the effect of an obstinate disposition, but as it really is a truly conscientious scruple." " In the trying situation of outward affairs," when all occupations were interrupted, the Meeting for Sufferings recommended that a "stock for relief" be raised and set apart for helping Friends who were in distress and straits. In '76 a requisition was made by the military officers of the colonial forces that Friends should give a bond of security to endeavour to keep their cattle from falling into other parts of America, and sold into slavery. Numbers of whom, with many of their offspring, are yet continued in a state of bondage. And as there is a Law subsisting which operates to the discouragement of many of the conscientious and well-disposed inhabitants of this state, against liberating their slaves, and no Legislative provision yet made for those who have been set at liberty from Religious motives. We therefore with submission intreat that ye may afford them such relief as you in wisdom may see meet, believing the entire abolition of Slavery a matter worthy of the most serious attention of the Legislative Body. And tho' we think it needless to use arguments to gain the assents of your minds to this great truth that all mankind without distinction have equally a natural right to freedom, yet we would take the liberty in this case to call your attention as fellow believers in Christ, to that excellent rule laid down by him, ' that what- soever ye would that men should do unto you do ye even so unto them. ' ' ' With due respect we subscribe oiurselves ' ' Your real friends " Signed by order, and on behalf of said Meeting held in New York 14th 12th mo. 1784, "Edmd. Prior, clerk." 26o QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. n the hands of the English troops. The advice of the Meeting for Sufferings was " that Friends do not comply with this requisition." In 1777 Governor Tryon informed the Meeting for Sufferings that some Quakers had incurred the displeasure of the authorities by being " too busy and active in the present commotions," and to offset this activity he proposed that the Society of Friends should raise a sum of money to provide the troops with stockings and other necessities. The answer of the Meeting is calm and dignified but very positive. It is as follows : " We may inform the Governor that it is with sorrow we may acknowledge the deviation that hath appeared in some under our name, notwithstanding a care which hath been extended in our collective capacity to caution and advise our Members in these respects. But apprehending that the proposed contribution is manifestly contrary to our religious Testimony against war & fightings which as a Religious body we have uniformly maintained ever since we were first distinguished as such. We are therefore under a necessity of declining a compliance therewith. Very sincerely acknowledging our obligation to the Governor for his friendly disposition heretofore manifested toward us we can at the same time assure him that our motives in thus declining his proposal are purely conscientious." In 1 78 1 certain Friends were appointed by the Yearly Meeting to visit the meetings on Long Island, and were " stopped by military men," at the order of General Washington. A committee was appointed thereupon to visit General Washington in person and explain to him the peaceful nature of the " concern," but he still refused to let them pass. During the hard closing months of the New York campaign, Friends once more issued a document to the membership, " affectionately recom- mending the members of the Society that they be careful to cherish in themselves and in one another their tender scruples against contributing to or in any wise giving countenance to the spirit of war, and that they preserve a conduct uniformly consistent with our peaceable principles and profession." cH. II MEETINGS AND ACTIVITIES 261 When the war was over and the new order established, Friends loyally accepted it, but they were themselves deeply affected by the fires through which they had passed. Those who had believed that it was right to fight in a great emergency had been sifted out of the Society, and those who were left were furnace-tested peace men and pledged henceforth to maintain "con- sistency to the profession." The Revolution was an epoch period for the Society not only in issues of peace and war, but for the reformation of ideas in all matters of vital policy. The purging of slavery was, no doubt, the beginning of the new moral awakening among Friends. The hard crisis and the stern siftings of the Revolution further touched the moral quick, and from this epoch the leaders of the Society were consecrated with a new zeal to the business of preparing a people of the Lord. The Revolution was followed by a decided expansion of the territory of Quakerism in the state of New York, and by a revival of education within the Society. During the 'eighties there arose a demand for schools from every section, and from this time dates the birth of the Quaker ideal for a carefully educated membership. All local meetings were recommended " to use their exertions in endeavouring to promote schools for the education of the rising generation." The definite plan for a school in New York City was formulated in 1781, and was sent to London in the hope of securing from England a Friend competent to teach the proposed school. The plan is an interesting revelation of educational conditions at that time. It is as follows : " Our Yearly Meeting for this Province held at Westbury on Long Island taking into consideration the expediency of our Youth being properly instructed in the use of learning under the tuition of a sober discreet Friend recommended the same through the Quarter to the Monthly Meeting. And we being impressed with a like concern, well knowing the importance of a suitable Education to Society as well as to individuals, take the liberty to request the aid & assistance of your Meeting to furnish us as soon as may be convenient with a young man, unmarried, a member of our Society, of exemplary life and conversation, a 262 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. « very good writer, well versed in Arithmetic, and a competent Knowledge of English Grammar. To such a one this Meeting will engage to give annually the sum of ;!£^20o currency or ^i 1 2, los. od. sterling, and we will allow him ^42 sterling for his passage to this city where he will reside. A school house will be found him at our expense, but his board and all other expenses he must meet himself. We apprehend the board may at present cost him about ;£^ioo currency or ^£^58, 5s. od. sterling not more. The number of scholars probably about forty. We would not wish to debar him from keeping an evening school which if he inclines to, the money from thence arising will be a perquesite to himself. But the money arising from the scholars taught in the day time will go toward defraying the above expenses." * Great things not only for Friends but for the education of New^ York City sprang from these feeble beginnings, for the school thus organised became in time the first public school in New York City, and is now the Friends' Seminary in that City. The period just beyond the Revolution was one of worldly prosperity for Friends, and they were to the front in commercial undertakings in the growing metropolis, but they did not win their success by compromise. At the close of our period there were probably about a thousand Friends in the City,^ and they were an eminently respectable group of people, with strict requirements of moral behaviour and with lofty ideals of spiritual religion. 1 From the Minutes of New York Monthly Meeting 7/11/1781. In 1787, the teacher had every alternate seventh day off, but had to furnish the ink and firewood ! 2 There were by actual count 1826 Friends in New York City in 1830. BOOK III THE QUAKERS IN THE SOUTHERN COLONIES 263 CHAPTER I THE PLANTING OF QUAKERISM IN THE SOUTHERN COLONIES In New England the Quaker societies were formed mainly out of persons who were already profoundly religious, but dissatisfied with the rigid theology which prevailed about them ; and the persecution which rained like iire on the apostles and adherents of the inward light came from the men who were consecrated to the task of building in the New World a Puritan City of God, with the Bible for its Magna Charta. In New York the nucleus of each Quaker group was, as it had been in New England, a company of persons already in revolt from the religious system about them, but earnestly seeking real Bread for their souls. The persecution, here, too, fierce indeed, but not motived to the same extent as in Massachusetts by the conviction that utter extirpation of the heresy was the only hope for the colony, came from the Dutch magistrates and was administered in the interests of civil order rather than for the protection of an established church. In the southern colonies, to a very much greater extent than in the North, Quakerism, especially in the Carolinas, drew its material from the unchurched classes and gathered in persons of no definite religious affiliation. The persecution which was meted out in these colonies was, with a few exceptions in Virginia, comparatively mild and was inflicted in the Interests of the established [English] Church. The first attempt to propagate the Quaker message in the southern colonies, so far as our records and Journals 365 266 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. m furnish information, was made by Elizabeth Harris of London, who came out on this hazardous mission in 1656, about simultaneously with the arrival of Mary Fisher and Ann Austin in Boston.^ It has generally been supposed that her religious labours were in Virginia, and that the first persons won to Quakerism in the South were residents of this colony, but it seems practically certain, from the evidence at hand, that Elizabeth Harris' " convincements," at least those of which we have definite information, were made in the colony of Maryland, though she may have performed some labour of which we have no accounts in Virginia as well. Gerard Roberts, writing to George Fox in July 1657, says : "The Friend who went to Virginia [evidently Elizabeth Harris] is returned in a pretty condition. There she was gladly received by many who met together, and the Governor is convinced." ^ The person here called " the Governor who is con- vinced " is perhaps Robert Clarkson. Thomas Hart of London, referring to Robert Clarkson in a letter to Thomas Willan and George Taylor in 1658, says, "I suppose this man is the governor of that place," i.e. the place visited by E. Harris.^ Now Robert Clarkson was beyond any question a citizen of Maryland. He was never " governor " of the colony, but he was a member of the General Assembly, or House of Burgesses, from Ann Arundel County,* and the correspondents have probably used the word " governor " in a loose and untechnical ' There occurs an interesting reference to Elizabeth Harris in John Stubbs' letter to George Fox in connection with the Battledore : ' ' Here is [in London] Elizabeth Harris who sometimes goes forth to steeple-houses in sackcloth and she hath much peace in this service ; there was some seemed rather to be against it, which troubled her a little. She spoke to me with many tears about it several weeks ago, and I said I thought I might write to thee about it, and she desired I might. After she had been at Cambridge, it came to her she must go to Manchester the sixth month. And so she would be glad to have a line or two from thee about it before she go, as soon as can be, the time draws near of her passing." — Crosfield MSS. (1660) Devonshire House. '^ Swarthmore Collection, iii. 127. ^ Swarthmore Collection, iv. 197. * Archives of Maryland, i. 382. CH.I QUAKERS IN SOUTHERN COLONIES 267 sense. They have also been vague and hazy in their colonial geography, and have probably used the word " Virginia " for this general section of the great, more or less unknown, New World. The most concrete information which we possess about the success of Elizabeth Harris' labours and the locality reached by her is a Letter written by this " con- vinced governor," Robert Clarkson. His letter is written from Severn under date of January 14, 1658 [Old Style, Eleventh Mo. 1657], and reads as follows: " Elizabeth Harris, Dear Heart, I salute thee in the tender love of the Father, which moved thee toward us and I do own thee to have been a minister by the will of God to bear the outward testimony to the inward word of truth in me and others. Of which word of life God hath made my wife a partaker with me and hath established our hearts in His fear, and likewise Ann Dorsey in a more large measure ; her husband I hope abides faithful ; likewise John Baldwin and Henry Caplin ; Charles Balye abides convinced and several in those parts where he dwells.i Elizabeth Beasley abides as she was when thou was here [apparently " convinced "]. Thomas Cole and William Cole have both made open confession of the truth ; likewise Henry Woolchurch, and many others suifer with us the reproachful name [of Quaker]. William Fuller abides convinced. I know not but William Durand doth the like.^ Nicholas Wayte abides convinced. Glory be to God who is the living fountain and fills all that abide in Him. " The two messengers thou spoke of in thy letters have not yet come to this place ; we heard of two come to Virginia in the fore part of the winter,^ but we heard that they were soon put in prison, and not suffered to pass. We heard further that they desired liberty to pass to this place, but it was denied them, whereupon one of them answered, that though they might not be suffered, yet he must come another time. We have heard that they are to be kept in prison till the ship that brought them be ready to depart the country again, and then to be sent out of ' The Charles Bayly mentioned here helped John Perrot in 1661 to secure release from his confinement in Rome and became one of his extreme followers in the schism which is discussed farther on in this chapter. ' William Durand was one of Cromwell's Commissioners for the government of Maryland and was Secretary of the Commission. He may possibly have been the person referred to as " governor." ' Probably Thomas Thurston and Josiah Coale. , 268 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. m the country. We have disposed of the most part of the books which were sent, so that all parts where there are Friends are furnished and every one that desires it may have benefit of them ; at Herring Creek, Rhoad River, South River, all about Severn, the Brand Neck, and thereabouts the Seven Mountains and Kent. . . . With my dear love I salute thy husband and the rest of Friends ; and rest with thee in the Eternal Word which dbideth forever. Farewell, Robert Clarkson." ' It is evident that the writer of this letter w^as not in Virginia. He has heard of the arrival of two Friends in Virginia, but he says, " they have not come to this place," and he adds that "they desired liberty from their prison in Virginia to pass to this place." Robert Clarkson was, as has been shown above, an inhabitant of the colony of Maryland. In 1662 he was arrested and brought before the court of Ann Arundel County for having violated the military act of that colony and was fined five hundred pounds of cask-tobacco.^ He had thus at that date plainly become a Quaker. William Durand was also a citizen of Maryland. Thomas and William Cole and Henry Woolchurch, mentioned in the above letter, were also Maryland Friends. Severn is a well-known Maryland region, and all the places named where the books were distributed are familiar localities not far remote from the present city of Annapolis. Therefore, in spite of the fact that Bowden and Janney^ and most other writers on Quaker history have located Elizabeth Harris' " convince- ments" in Virginia, between the Rappahannock and York Rivers, I am forced to the conclusion that we are here dealing with the origin of Quakerism in the colony of Maryland." Sometime in 1657, Josiah Coale, of Bristol, and Thomas Thurston, a Quaker preacher, from Gloucestershire, England, already known to us for their labours in the Northern Colonies, landed in Virginia, having come, as one of them ' The original, which I have somewhat shortened, is in Swarthmore Collection iii. 7. ^ Besse, ii. 381. ^ Janney's History of the Friends, (i860) i. 431. * For a similar view see M'lllwaine's The Struggle of Protestant Dissenters for Religious Toleration in Virginia (Johns Hopkins Studies, vol. xii. ), p. 20. cH. I QUAKERS IN SOUTHERN COLONIES 269 writes, because they " were made sensible of the groaning of the oppressed seed in that place." ^ So far as we know they were the first to plant the Quaker "seed" in this great southern colony. They seem to have spent six months or more in Virginia — some of this period perhaps being wasted in prison ^ — and they were evidently very successful in reaching the people, since there are many evidences from this time forward of the widespread prevalence of Quakers in several parts of the colony. We have seen already that the incipient movement was somewhat interrupted by the arrest and imprisonment of the visitors. We must now examine briefly the methods which were contrived in Virginia for suppressing the tide of new religious thought which was sweeping — as it proved, irresistibly — into this Episcopalian colony. As little as in Massachusetts had there formed in the minds of the Virginia colonists any adequate idea that religious tolera- tion was a virtue. The early laws of Virginia insist with much iteration on uniformity. The earliest danger to uniformity in the colony came from the immigration of adventurous Roman Catholics, and the first anti-tolera- tion laws were therefore framed against these. In 1 642 it was decreed that " no popish recusants shall at any time hereafter exercise the place or places of secret counsellors, register or comiss : surveyors, sheriffs, or any other publique place, but be utterly disabled" ^ The Act further provides that any one holding office and refusing to take " the oath of allegiance and supremacy " shall be dismissed from said office, and fined 1000 pounds of tobacco. The following year it was enacted that " all ministers whatsoever which shall reside in the coUony are to be conformable to the orders and constitutions of the Church of England, and not otherwise to be permitted to teach or preach publickly or privately. And the Governor and Counsil do take care that all nonconformists, upon notice of them, shall be compelled to depart the coUony with all convenience." * ■ Letter of Josiah Coale to Margaret Fell. — Bowden, i. 342. ^ We learn this fact from Robert Clarkson's letter. ' Hening's Statutes at Large of Virginia, i. 268-269. * Hening, i. 277. 270 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. m When the Quakers first disturbed the religious uniformity of the colony these laws — grown innocuous with time — were revived and set into operation to meet the novel situation, but they were soon found to be inadequate for the trouble in hand, and the lawmakers grappled anew with the emergency.^ In the spring of 1660 a definite Act was passed against Quakers as such, and the wording of the Act implies that the objection to Quakers was not primarily based on doctrine, but on the supposition that they were a menace to the stability of social life and civil government. The Act is entitled " An Act for Suppressing Quakers," and reads : ~~ , "Whereas there is an unreasonable and turbulent sort of people, commonly called Quakers, who, contrary to the law, do dayly gather together unto them unlawful! Assemblies and congregations of people teaching and publishing lies, miracles, false visions, prophecies, and doctrines, which have influence upon the com- munities of men, both ecclesiastical and civill, endeavoring and attempting thereby to destroy religion, lawes, communities, and all bonds of civil socitie, leaving it arbitrarie to every vaine and vitious person whether men shall be safe, laws established, offenders punished, and Governors rule, hereby disturbing the publique peace and just interest : to prevent and restraine which mischiefe : it is enacted that no master or commander of any shippe or other vessel do bring into this collonie any person or persons called Quakers, under penalty of ^^loo to be levied upon him and his estate, etc. That all Quakers as have beene questioned or shall hereafter arrive shall be apprehended where- soever they shall be found, and they be imprisoned without baile or mainprize till they do adjure this country or put in security with all speed to depart the collonie and not to return again. And if any should dare to presume to returne hither after such departure to be proceeded against as contemner of the lawes and magistracy and punished accordingly, and caused again to depart the country. And if they should the third time be so audacious and impudent as to returne hither to be proceeded against as ffelons. That noe person shall entertain any of the Quakers, . . . nor permit in or near his house any Assemblies of Quakers in the like penalty of ;^ioo. ' It should, however, be stated that this earliest attempt to frustrate the work of Quaker missionaries was in the Commonwealth period, when the Puritan influence was strongest. cH. I QUAKERS IN SOUTHERN COLONIES 271 " And that no person do presume on their peril to dispose or publish their books, pamphlets, or libells, bearing the title of their tenets and opinions." ^ In 1662, under an Act to prevent the profaning of Sunday, new measures were levelled against them. The Act provides that : "Quakers who, out of nonconformity to the Church, totally absent themselves, are liable to a fine of £^20 for every month's absence from Church. And all Quakers, for assembling in unlawful assemblies and conventicles, shall be fined and pay, each of them, there taken, 200 pounds of tobacco for each time." ^ In the same year it was decreed that as there are in the colony " many persons who, out of aversenesse to the orthodox established religion, or out of new fangled conceits of their owne heretical inventions, refuse to have their children baptized," they shall be fined 2000 pounds of tobacco for every refusal — half to go to the informer.^ These laws, however, though they were vigorously applied, proved utterly ineffectual. Quaker ministers continued to come as though they were wanted, and the people were '" convinced " as though it were the popular course. The fact of the increase of Quakerism is proved not from partisan Journals, but from Colonial Records. In March 1662 it is declared that " persons called Quakers do assemble themselves in greate numbers in several parts of this colony," and they are charged with " maintayning a secret and strict correspondency among themselves," and of holding " dangerous opinions and tenets." It is thereupon enacted, evidently in imitation of the English Conventicle Act, that for separating from the Established worship, and for assembling to the number of five or more in religious worship not authorised by the laws of Virginia, a fine of 200 pounds of tobacco shall be imposed on each person, with banishment from the colony for the third offence. A fine of 5000 pounds of tobacco was imposed ' Hening, i. 532-533. ^ Hening, ii. 48. ' Hening, ii. 165. This statute implies that there were Anabaptists in the colony as well as Quakers, for the latter not only objected to the baptism of infants, but of adults as well. 272 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. m "for entertaining Quakers to teach or preach in their houses." All fines were to be remitted if the Quaker would give security that he would " forbeare to meete " in such assemblies in the future.^ The most objectionable feature of this anti-Quaker legislation was the provision that a proportion of the fine — in some cases a half of it — should go to the informer, and this mean incentive was offered to induce neighbours to spy on each other, and to report violations of uniformity. The colonial records show that there was considerable suffering under these laws, and Besse has preserved the story of one case of brutal persecution, namely, the imprisonment at Jamestown of George Wilson of England, and his companion, William Cole of Maryland. They were thrown into an intolerable dungeon — "a nasty, stinking prison " where Wilson " laid down his life " — and the story of the sufferings in this prison is so dreadful that it is hardly printable in detail, but the spirit of love and forgiveness and the triumphant note which breathe through their communications are most impressive. " For all their cruelty," writes Wilson, " I can truly say, ' Father, forgive them, they know not what they do,' " ^ and the biographer of William Cole says : " Through his ministry many were established in the truth, and though he was much decayed in his body by his cruel imprisonment, and never recovered from it, he felt the living presence of the Lord with him." ^ This persecution was imposed and these anti-Quaker laws passed in spite of royal instructions in favour of religious liberty. Charles II. wrote to Governor Berkeley in 1662 : " Because wee are willing to give all possible encouragement to persons of different persuasion in matters of Religion to transport themselves thither with their stocks; you are not to suffer any man to be molested or disquieted in the exercise of his Religion, so he be content with a quiet and peaceable enjoying it, not giving therein offense or scandall to the Government" * ' Hening, ii. 181-183. ' Besse, ii. 381 ; Bishop, p. 351. ' Piety Promoted, i. 80-81. * Neill's Virginia Carolorum, p. 392. cH.i QUAKERS IN SOUTHERN COLONIES 273 "But notwithstanding enactments against the Quakers," writes Neill, " their travelling preachers persisted in going to out of the way places, without money and asking for none, yet preaching a gospel of peace and good will, as far as they under- stood the teaching of Christ. Their cheerful endurance of hardship, with their plain teaching, attracted the attention and aroused the consciences of rude frontiersmen, who, hitherto, had no one to care for their souls, and Quaker meetings multiplied." ^ The first Quaker missionaries in Virginia were, as we have seen, Josiah Coale and Thomas Thurston, They travelled northward, labouring as they went, especially in Maryland, and so on, by an almost unimaginable wilder- ness journey, to New England, where they took their share of the vials of the Puritan medicine for Quakers. Thurston, however, was soon back in Virginia, where he had another period of imprisonment. On his release he appears to have carried many colonists into the Quaker movement, for Josiah Coale, writing from New England to Margaret Fell, tells her that Thomas Thurston is in Virginia, and says : " The living power of the Lord goes along with him, and there is like to be a great gathering."^ Three of the Woodhouse voyagers, William Robinson, Christopher Holder, and Robert Hodgson, did missionary work in Virginia in 1658 — probably Humphrey Norton was there in 1659 — and as happened wherever these enthusiastic souls went, there were marked results of their preaching and personal labour. William Robinson says in an extant Letter : " There are many people convinced, and some in several parts are brought into the sense and feeling of truth." ^ Josiah Coale was back in the colony in 1660, and wrote of his visit to George Fox in these encouraging words : " I left Friends in Virginia generally very well and fresh in the truth. I believe I shall be in Virginia again." * George Rofe, an English Quaker who had a long list of imprisonments behind him, contributed in 1661 to the ' Neill's Virginia Carolorum, p. 296. ^ Letter in Bowden, i. 343. ' Letter of William Robinson, 1659, quoted by Bowden, i. 346 * Coale's Letter in A.R.B. Collection, No. 44. 274 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. m spread of Quakerism in Virginia. Our only account of his visit is in a letter of his to Stephen Crisp : " God hath prospered my soul according to my desire and hath blessed His work in my hands; and hath made me an instrument of good to many through these countries. . . . The truth prevaileth through the most of all these parts [Barbadoes], and many settled meetings there are in Maryland and Virginia and New England . . . through all which places I have travelled in the power of the Spirit and in the great dominion of the truth, having a great and weighty service for the Lord." ^ There was a large convincement to Quakerism in Lower Norfolk County, and the County records show that the Friends of this region had much to suffer. Under date of June 27, 1663, Governor Berkeley appointed a commission to see that " the abominate seede of ye Quakers spread not," and he urges the gentlemen named on the commission to have " an exact care of this pestilent sect of ye Quakers." ^ But already before this urging came from the Governor the desire for a share of the fines was pushing the sheriffs to activity. There are many entries like the following : "June 10, 1 66 1. Whereas Mr. John Hill, high-sheriff, hath given information and presented Benjamin Forby for admitting and suffering Quakers at his house being contrary to ye lawes of this country, ye said Forby is taken into custody to be tried for breaking the lawes against such people." ^ "December 20, 1662. The High Shreive of the County did t^ke divers persons who were at an unlawful meetinge with those commonly called Quakers — They were fined 200 pounds of tobacco each person, of whom there were twenty." * "May 3, 1663. Twelve persons were arrested at the house of Richard Russell, and Russell was fined ;^ioo for entertaining and permitting the meeting, half of which went to the informer, William Hill, 'High Shreive.' The 12th of November, twenty- two ' persons called Quakers ' were arrested at Richard Russell's house where John Porter, junior, was ' speaking.' The preachers ^ Crisf Collection of MSS. No. 102. There were many other labourers in this field of whose work we possess few or no details. Mention should be made of Elizabeth Hooton, Joan Brocksoppe, Joseph Nicholson, John Liddal, and Jane Millard. 2 Lower Norfolk County Antiquary, iii. 78. ' Ibid. iii. 105. * Ibid. iii. p. 141. cH. I QUAKERS IN SOUTHERN COLONIES 275 were fined 500 pounds of tobacco, the 'entertainer' of the meeting 5000 pounds, and each attender 200 pounds." ^ "November 20, 1663. Nine 'people commonly called Quakers were seized for holding an unlawful assembly aboard ye Shipp Blissinge, riding at anchor in the southern branch of the Elizabeth River.' John Porter, junior, was speaking. They were all fined 200 pounds of tobacco." ^ Some of the prominent Friends of this Elizabeth River region had been the actors in a strange lawsuit a few years before they became Friends. In 1659 Ann Godby — a person often arrested in the 'sixties as a Quaker — was charged with " casting slander and scandall on the good name and creditt of Nicholas Robinson's wife, terming her a witch." Ann was proved guilty of the charge, and her husband was fined 300 pounds of tobacco for the freedom of his wife's tongue. John Porter, junior, was one of the Justices in the suit. Three years later Ann Godby was a staunch Quaker, and John Porter, junior, was the foremost Quaker " minister " in the county. Whether Nicholas Robinson's wife came into the new Society or not I cannot prove, though I find that many Robinson women did.^ It seems impossible, in this world of conflicting views, to have any movement for the illumination and spiritual enlargement of men which is not more or less blocked and hampered by the blunders, the littleness, and the selfish- ness of persons who are one-sided, and who push some one aspect of the " truth " out of balance until it turns out to be misleading " error." Every apostolic undertaking is more or less marred by some misguided Hymenaeus or Philetus " whose word eats like a gangrene." * John Perrot, originally " a man of great natural parts," and who was inspired in 1660 with the conviction that he was divinely sent to Rome for the conversion of the Pope, became the instrument of confusion and schism in Virginia, and nearly wrecked the work so well begun in the colony. There was evidently a strain of insanity in him, but even ' Lower Norfolk County Antiquary, iii. pp. 79-110. ^ Hid. iii. p. 109. ' Ibid. iii. p. 36. * 2 Tim. ii. 17. 276 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. m his very unusual psychic traits only made him more captivating and influential with the simple-minded people who were impressed that he exhibited "greater spirituality" than did the other exponents of Quakerism. He pushed the testimony against form and ceremony to the absurd extreme of " nihilism " — there were to be no forms, not even the " form " of holding meetings for worship ! Details of his visit in Virginia are lacking, but the corre- spondence and Journals of travelling Friends bear witness to what they call " the leaven of his unclean spirit." " He has done much hurt," write in 1663 Mary Tomkins and Alice Ambrose, two persecution-tried missionaries, who visited Virginia in 1662, "and he has made our travels hard and our labours [in Virginia] sore. What we have borne and suffered concerning him has been more and harder than all we have received from our enemies." ^ It has been shown that the first " convincement " to Quakerism in the South was in Maryland under the ministry of Elizabeth Harris, who gathered a large group of Friends about Severn and Kent. This beginning was soon followed up by the work of Josiah Coale and Thomas Thurston, who visited many sections of this colony on their travels to New England in 1658. They appear to have found considerable response to their message, and there were many colonists who were ready to hazard everything for what powerfully appealed to them as the truth.^ The Records of the Governor and Council of Mary- land furnish our main clues to the success of their under- taking, and to the suffering which it involved.' The ^ Letter of Mary Tomkins and Alice Ambrose to George Fox (Swarthmore Collection, iv. 239) What they actually received from their "enemies" — the authorities of Virginia — was the infliction of thirty-two lashes apiece from a nine- corded whip, they being pilloried "in an uncivil manner," with seizure of all their goods and expulsion from the colony. — New England Judged, p. 439. ^ They were entertained in Maryland by Richard Preston and William Berry, both of whom were prominent men in the colony. Berry's home was at Chop- tank, and he became a leading man and a preacher among the Friends. ^ The Provincial Assembly of Maryland had adopted an Ordinance of Toleration in 1649. It was, however, not effective in practice. This change of attitude in the matter of toleration was largely due to the influence of the new Governor of the colony. Governor Fendall. CH.I QUAKERS IN SOUTHERN COLONIES 277 first entry about Quakers in the Colonial Records of Maryland is under date of July 8, 1658. It is in a minute of the proceedings of the Council, or Upper House, held at Patuxent, and it reports the "alarm" felt by " the increase of the Quakers." ^ Under the same date (July 8, 1658) appears this entry : " Upon information that Thomas Thurston and Josiah Coale had refused to subscribe the engagement by the Articles of 24th March [involving an oath] a warrant was issued to the SheriiTs to bring them to Court." ^ July 16, 1658: "Upon information that Thomas Thurston was in prison and Josiah Coale was at Anne Arundel seducing the people and dissuading the people from taking the engagement [on account of the oath] ordered the Sheriff of Anne Arundel to take the body of Josiah Coale and Thomas Thurston." The warrant states that " all who are of their Church or Judgment do refuse to subscribe the engagement." ° July 22,1658: It is recorded that William Burges and Thomas Meares refused to take the oath as com- missioners and justices of the peace, " pretending that it was in no case lawful to swear."* As they had both formerly taken the oath without any compunctions, it is evident that they had come under Quaker influence. When the case of these justices came up for action, Michael Brookes of Calvert County joined them in the refusal to swear, and the three were fined.* Thomas Meares appears later in the colonial records as a full- fledged Quaker." July 23, 1658: The Council took into consideration "the insolent behaviour of some people called Quakers," who " stood covered " in presence of the Court, " refused to subscribe the engagement," and exhibited principles which "tended to the destruction of the government." They were given their choice of subscribing the engage- ment by the 20th of August, or to " depart the Province on paine due to rebels and traitors." ^ ' Archives of Maryland, iii. 347. ^ Ibid. iii. 347. ' Hid. iii. 348. ' Ihid. iii. 351. » Hid. iii. 358. " Itid. iii. 394. ' Ibid. iii. 352. 278 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. i„ On his return from New England, Thomas Thurston engaged again in religious work in Maryland, and again came into collision with the authorities. Under date of July 23, 1659, this record appears : " It is well known in this province that there have bin several vagabonds and persons known by the name of Quakers that have presumed to come into this province, as well dissuad- ing the people from complying with the military discipline in this time of danger [there was at the time an armed contest between the ' Baltimore faction ' and the ' Claybome faction '], as also from giving testimony [under oath] or being [swom] Jurors or bearing any office in the province." Such persons are ordered whipped from constable to constable until they reach the bounds of the province.^ Eleven days later (August 3, 1659), Thurston was "for- ever banished this province," on pain of being whipped thirty-eight lashes, and then sent out of the province. It was decreed the same date that " any person presuming to receive, harbour, or conceal the said Thomas Thurston " should be fined 500 pounds of tobacco.^ Besse furnishes a long list of persons — presumably persons " convinced " of Quaker principles — who suffered under the Maryland government in 1658 for refusing to fight, or to take an oath, or for entertaining Quakers. This list contains thirty names, which probably indicates the number of adult males who had become Friends in the colony in 1658.* The fine for entertaining a Quaker missionary was £^, 15 s. This colony was also visited, as Virginia was, by William Robinson, Christopher Holder, and Robert Hodgson in 1659, and as happened everywhere "a large convincement " resulted from their labours. Josiah Coale came through Maryland a second time, for a visit of ten weeks, in 1660, and, under the influence of the Restora- tion in England, he found "the spirit of persecution chained down for a season." He reports "precious meetings " and " the Lord's precious presence and love ^ Archives of Maryland, iii. 362, 2 7^2^, jii. 264. ' Besse, ii. 378-380. CH.I QUAKERS IN SOUTHERN COLONIES 279 amongst us in our assemblies."^ The "chaining" of the spirit of persecution did not last long, for Coale was apprehended and banished soon after this letter was written, and prosecutions for refusal to swear and fight are frequent.^ An important letter from Coale, written from Virginia, Feb. 3, 1661, says: "As concerning Friends in the Province of Maryland, I left them generally very well and fresh in the truth, though I found them not so ; for through judging one another and clashing amongst themselves they were even become as dry branches and there was little savour of life amongst them." * George Rofe soon followed on after Josiah Coale, and he reports, under date of 1 66 1 , finding " many settled meetings in Maryland," and he says that he "travelled in the power of the Spirit and in great dominion of the truth, having a great and weighty service for the Lord."* We have too few data to enable us to present in any impressive way the actual internal life of the new society at this early stage of its career, but it is evident that Friends in this region at this period were in constant jeopardy in body and goods,^ though there is abundant evidence that they were valiant in spirit, and ready to suffer to any limit for their loyalty to their light It should, however, be noted that the persecution which came upon them in Maryland at this early stage of their history, was motived, not by intolerance of their religious teachings or sectarian bigotry on the part of the authorities, but by the sincere though mistaken concep- tion that the Quakers were hostile to government, and were inculcating views that were incompatible with a ' MS. Letter of Josiah Coale to George Fox, 1660. — A.R.B. Collection, No. 53. ^ There is a curious case of the prosecution of John Everitt who ' ' ran from his colors when prest to goe to the Susquehanna Fort, pleading that he could not bear arms for conscience's sake." He is to be " kept in chaynes and bake his own bread " until the jury is impanelled. — Archives of Maryland, iii. 435. ' Josiah Coale to Margaret Fell, Crosfield MSS. in Devonshire House. * Crisp Collection of MS. No. 102. ' One case, that of Peter Sharpe, a physician who owned an island in the Choptank River, will suffice. He held a note against Adam Staples for 1700 pounds of tobacco. Because Sharpe refused to take the oath of engagement. Staples petitioned the Court to annul the Note, which the Court did. — Besse, ii. 380. 28o QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. m well-ordered civil regime. They were supposed to be disrespectful to magistrates, revolutionary in design, aiming to annul courts and undermine all means of forceful defence. As soon as the solid people of the colony discovered the real nature of the new religion which was getting a foothold in Maryland, there came to be a general attitude of respect toward it. This change of attitude was largely due to the coming of three great leaders of the movement — the men who were the real " founders " of Quakerism in the Southern colonies — John Burnyeat, George Fox, and William Edmundson. Burnyeat was the first of the three in the field. He arrived in Maryland in April 1665, coming from Barbadoes, the "nursery" of Western Quakerism, and he spent the entire summer in the province of Maryland, travelling and labouring in the ministry, holding " large meetings in the Lord's power " — " Friends were greatly comforted and several were con- vinced." ^ At the end of the summer he went down into Virginia, where he found much havoc wrought in the little Society by the " bewitchment " of John Perrot, who with his quietistic notions had led Friends to "forsake their meetings " and to become " loose and careless." Burnyeat appears to have turned the tide and saved the day : " Friends were revived and refreshed, and raised up into a service of life through the Lord's goodness and renewed visitation." ^ He was back in Virginia in 167 1, with Daniel Gould of Rhode Island for his com- panion, and he now " found a freshness of life among them. They had grown up to a degree of their former zeal and tenderness. I found a great openness in the country and had several blessed meetings. I advised them to have a men's meeting [for Church business] to settle things in good order and to keep things sweet." ^ ^ Burnyeat' s /oama/, p. 187. The sad episode — " sore exercise," he calls it — of his visit in Maryland was the "fall " and defection of Thomas Thurston, who had been a valiant pioneer in the early planting of Quakerism in all the colonies. He was, in an evil moment, caught and carried away by the spurious "spiritu- ality " of Perrot's teaching, and became ' ' lost to the truth " and ' ' a vagabond as to his spiritual condition." " Ibid. pp. 188-189. ° liii- P- 199. CH.I QUAKERS IN SOUTHERN COLONIES 281 He spent the spring of 1672 in Maryland, doing the same kind of constructive work as he had done so successfully in Virginia. In April he appointed a meeting at West River, Maryland, for all Friends in the province — the birth-date of Baltimore Yearly Meeting, the second to be organised in America — and it was " a very large meeting which continued for several days." Meetings for men and for women were organised for the transaction of business and " for the blessed ordering of the Gospel." ^ " Through the good Providence of the Lord," George Fox landed in the Patuxent (West) River just in time to attend this General Meeting. He had spent six weeks in the passage from Jamaica to Maryland — a voyage so boisterous and full of hazard that they all " admired the Providence of God who preserved them." Fox notes with much satisfaction that " many people of considerable quality in the world's account " were at the great Mary- land Meeting. " There were five or six Justices of the Peace, the Speaker of their parliament or Assembly, one of the Council, and divers others of note." ^ This marks the turning-point, and from that time on Quakerism was considered an eminently respectable religion in Lord Baltimore's province. Fox held another large meeting at the Cliffs — north of the Patuxent.^ He arrived there soaked with water, his boat having capsized when he was in a great perspiration, having " come very hot out of a meeting before," but "the Lord's power preserved [him] from taking hurt," and " many people came to the meeting and received the truth with reverence." Fox, with a large band of helpers, including John Burnyeat, "went over by boat to the Eastern shore" of the Chesapeake, where they had "a large and heavenly meeting," with " several persons of quality and two Justices of the Peace " at it. He held an extraordinary meeting with the " Indian Emperor, his kings and their cocka- rooses," telling them that "God was raising up his tabernacle of witness in their wilderness country." ^ Journal, pp. 199-200. ^ Fox's Journal, ii. 161-163. * Ibid. p. 165. 282 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. m On his return journey from New England — a journey crowded with toil and peril and dramatic happenings — Fox arrived in Maryland again toward the end of September 1672 wet and weary, and "dirtied with getting through bogs," and held a large meeting near St. Michael's, where there were already many Friends. Here a judge's wife came to the meeting and declared : " She had rather hear us once than a priest a thousand times ! " In October a great General Meeting " for all Maryland " was held at Tredhaven Creek on the eastern shore. The meeting lasted five days — the first three days being for worship and preaching and then two for church business. " Several magistrates with their wives, many Protestants of divers sorts, and some Papists and persons of chief account in the country," were at the meeting. " It was thought there were a thousand people, and there were so many boats passing on the river that it was almost like the Thames ! One of the Justices said he never saw so many people together in that country before. It was a very heavenly meeting, the presence of the Lord was gloriously manifested. Friends sweetly refreshed, people generally satisfied, and many convinced." ^ For a month following. Fox was pushing on from meeting to meeting, almost living in a boat, often "wet and weary with rowing," but having " good service," " very large meetings," giving " a thundering testimony to the truth," convincing " Justices and other persons of quality," and " seeing the truth reach into the hearts of the people beyond words." ^ The 5 th of November, with Robert Widders, James Lancaster, and George Pattison, he sailed away for Virginia, having won to his cause a very large number of persons of "upper rank," as he calls them. He landed at a " place called Nancemond, about two hundred miles from Maryland." The region of Fox's activity in Virginia ■^ 'Fo'iCs Journal, ii. 179. 2 Ibid. pp. 180-183. Among the places now visited by Fox was Severn (now Annapolis) where there was such a crowd that "no building would hold them." Three Friends, WiUiam Cole, William Richards, and John Gary, writing in 1674 for the meeting to Friends in Bristol, England, say : " Much people there be in our country that come to hear the truth declared . . . and many by it are convinced." — Bowden, vol. i. 381. cH. I QUAKERS IN SOUTHERN COLONIES 283 was the strip of country lying between the James River and the North Carolina border. He found isolated Friends scattered through the district. " Officers and magistrates " came to his meetings which were " precious." Men's and women's meetings for business were established. A large meeting, too greatly attended for any house to contain the people, was held at Pagan Creek, and " the sound of truth was spread." He went on south, through a " plashy " country, " full of great bogs and swamps," "wet to the knees, lying abroad at night in the woods." At Somerton he found a woman who " had a sense of God upon her," and who arranged for the little party to sleep on mats before her fire. Proceeding on they struck Bennett's Creek (which he calls " Bonner's ") and paddled into the Chowan River (then called the Macocomocock), and down this river by canoe into the regions bordering on Albemarle Sound. Fox's own account of this journey is quaintly told in the manuscript Journal of the American visit. "We passed in a canoe downe the creek to Mattocomake River and came to Hugh Smithick's [Smith's] house and people of the world came to see us (for there were no Friends in these parts). Wee went to Nathaniel! Batts house ; he was formerly Governor of Roanoke and is most commonly known by the name of Captaine Batts ; he is a rude, desperate man who has great command over yt countrie, especially over ye Indians." But as Fox had been preceded in this country by William Edmundson, and as the latter was the real pioneer in the Carolinas, I shall turn aside to describe Edmundson's path-breaking visit. He was with Fox at the Patuxent General Meeting in 1671, and when the latter travelled north, Edmundson turned south, visited Virginia, holding " powerful meetings," " settling men's minds in the truth," establishing " a men's meeting for discipline," and then started off south with two Friends as companions. " It was," he writes, " all wilderness and no English inhabitants or padways, only some marked trees to guide people ; the first day's journey we did pretty well, and lay that night in the woods, as we often used to do in those Parts. The next Day being wet 284 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. m Weather we were sorely soyled in Swamps and Rivers, and one of the two that were with me for a Guide, was at a stand to know which way the Place lay we were to go unto : I perceiving he was at a Loss, turn'd my Mind to the Lord, and as He led me, I led the Way. So we travel'd in many Difficulties until about Sun-set; then they told me. They could travel no further; for they both fainted, being weak-spirited Men : I bid them stay there, and kindle a Fire, and I would ride a little farther, for I saw a bright Horrizon appear through the Woods which Travellers take as a Mark of some Plantation ; so rode on to it, and found it was only tall Timber Trees without Underwood : But I perceived a small Path, which I foUow'd till it was very dark, and rain'd violently ; then I alighted and set my back to a Tree, till the Rain abated : but it being dark, and the Woods thick, I walked all Night between the Trees : and though very weary, I durst not lie down on the Ground, for my Cloaths were wet to my Skin. I had eaten little or nothing that Day, neither had I anything to refresh me but the Lord. In the morning I return'd to seek my two Companions, and found them Ipng by a great Fire of Wood : I told them how I had far'd ; he that should have been the Guide would have perswaded me that we were gone past the Place where we intended ; but my Mind drew to the Path which I had found the Night before : So I led the way, and that Path brought us to the Place where we intended, viz. Henry Phillip's House by Albemarle River. " He and his wife had been convinc'd of the Truth in New England, and came there to live, who having not seen a Friend for seven Years before, they wept for Joy to see us : yet it being on a First Day Morning when we got there, although I was weary and faint, and my Cloaths all wet, I desired them to send to the People there-away to come to a Meeting about the middle of the Day, and I would lie down upon a Bed, and if I slept too long that they should awake me. Now about the Hour appointed many People came, but they had little or no Religion, for they came and sate down in the Meeting smoking their Pipes ; but in a little time the Lord's Testimony arose in the Authority of His Power, and their Hearts being reach'd with it, several of them were tender'd and received the Testimony. After Meeting they desir'd me to stay with them, and let them have more Meetings." ^ The colonists in this region, with the exception of Henry Phillips and his wife, were not Friends, and appar- ently, Edmundson says, "had little or no religion," i.e. ^ Edmundson's Journal, pp. 58-59. CH.I QUAKERS IN SOUTHERN COLONIES 285 they had no organised religion, no church, no ministry, though " their hearts were open " and they were eventually gathered in in large numbers into the Society of Friends. A Justice of the Peace named Francis Toms, who lived three miles from Phillips' house, " received the truth with gladness," and, at a meeting in his house, several more "had a sense of the power of God, received the truth and abode in it." ^ On his return to Virginia — a return journey more full of peril and difficulty than one ordinarily finds even in these biographies of the Quaker pioneers, every- where crowded with incidents of extraordinary endurance — Edmundson continued his work of organising and strengthening the meetings for discipline throughout the sections of Virginia where there wa-e Friends. He visited the Governor, Sir William Berkeley, but he found him " pevish and brittle." ^ He, however, succeeded better with some of the other officials of the colony. Justice Taverner and " several other persons of note " came to his meetings. Major-General Bennett and Colonel Dewes were " reached by the witness of God." This major-general, who had "a great estate," desired to contribute to the expenses of the Society, and finally became a member of it — " He was a brave, solid, wise man. He received the truth and died in it."' When Fox arrived in the Albeparle country of North Carolina in 1672 he found a little Quaker nucleus there as the result of William Edmundson's work. The little band of Quaker missionaries, led by Fox, found a man on their travels, living on the banks of the Chowan river, who was named Hugh Smith, to whose house " people of other professions " came to see and hear the travellers. Farther down the river they found a " captain," who was " very loving," and who lent them his boat, as they were very ' Edmundson's Journal, p. 60. ^ When Edmundson related to Major-General Bennett that the Governor was "brittle and pevish," the General asked, "Did he call you dog or rogue t" When Edmundson answered that he did not, the General said, ' ' Then you took Mm in his best humor 1 " Edmundson's Journal, p. 63. 286 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES BK.ni wet by the water " splashing " into the little canoe. With the captain's boat they started off for the Governor's house at Edenton, but they found the water so shallow that " the boat would not swim." " We were fain to put off our shoes and stockings and wade through the water some distance. The Governor, with his wife, received us lovingly." ^ A doctor at the Governor's house " would needs dispute," and he denied that " the light and Spirit of God " was in every one, declaring that it was not in Indians. " Whereupon," says Fox, " I called an Indian and asked him whether or not when he lied or did wrong to any, there was not something in him that reproved him for it. He said that there was such a thing in him that did so reprove him and make him ashamed. So we shamed the doctor before the Governor and people."^ The Governor kept them all night, and treated them very " courteously." The party from here went by Sound, about thirty miles, to the house of Joseph Scott, who was " a representative of the country." The people in these parts were "tender and much desired meetings." Four miles farther on another meeting was held, to which the Governor's Secretary came, "the chief Secretary of the Province," who was already " convinced." On their way back they visited the house of the Secretary of the colony, had an illustration of " the great power of God who carried them safely twenty-four miles in a rotten boat, the water being rough, and the winds high," and held a precious meeting at Hugh Smith's. They were eighteen days in North Carolina, and Fox felt that they had " made an entrance of truth upon the people " there.* They arrived on the nineteenth day of their travel, "exceedingly wet and dirty," at Somerton in Virginia, and lay that night in their clothes by the fire at the home of the woman who " had a sense of God upon her," and on the morrow they had a " good meeting " with the people about Somerton who " had a great desire to hear." * The territory covered by this early missionary activity ' Fox's Journal, ii. 185. 3 Ibid. ii. 185. ' IMd. ii. 186. 4 Ibid. ii. 187. CH.I QUAKERS IN SOUTHERN COLONIES 287 of Edmundson and Fox in North Carolina comprises the three present counties of Chowan, Perquimans, and Pasquotank. The increase from these " beginnings " was evidently rapid, for Governor Henderson Walker, writing to the Bishop of London in 1703, says : " George Fox . . . did infuse the Quaker principles into some small number of the people, which did and hath continued to grow ever since very numerous,"^ and William Gordon, writing to the secretary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in 1 709, says : " There are few or no dissenters in this Government but Quakers. . . . Some of the most ancient inhabitants, after George Fox went over, did turn Quakers."^ This missionary effort along the Albemarle was the first organised effort of any kind to carry the religion of Christ into North Carolina. No Episcopal minister had yet come to the colony, and no dissenting ministers appeared in this field before Fox and Edmundson. They were, therefore, in more senses than one, " path- breakers," as they pushed through the southern wilderness and answered the " great desire " of the people.^ George Fox spent a short time in Virginia, having "many large and precious meetings, to which a great many magistrates, officers, and other high people came." " The people were wonderfully affected," " the power of the Lord was gloriously seen and felt," and "a victory was got over the bad spirit which was in some " — evidently the remaining leaven of the Perrot movement which died hard.* Having finished " the service that lay upon him " in Virginia, Fox set sail in " an open sloop " for Maryland. The voyage was unusually tempestuous ; they were a good deal of the time " completely wet " and almost frozen with cold, for it was in January. Part of the time Fox himself sat at the helm and steered the sloop, but as soon as they reached the Patuxent the "precious meetings" ' Colonial Records of North Carolina, i. 571. ^ lUi. pp. 708-710. For further evidence that the Quakers brought the first message of Christianity jo North Carolina see Dr. Weeks's Reli^ous Development of North Carolina, Baltimore, 1892. * Journal, ii. 187-188. 288 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. m began again, and the people were " convinced." This third visit of Fox to Maryland (covering the period from the 3rd of January to the 21st of May 1673) was probably the most effective and constructive work of his entire American tour. He was at the very height of his efficiency as a preacher and organiser. His physical endurance seemed unlimited. He was almost continuously in a boat when not holding a meeting, often rowing himself. He held meetings in barns, in tobacco houses, in Friends' houses, and in the wigwams of the Indians — the weather being mostly too cold for out-door meetings. He had as usual an eye for public officials and "high people," and the meetings of this period saw the convincement of "a great many people of account in the world" — justices, magistrates, majors, captains, and " divers others of considerable account in the government." Just before sailing for England he attended another great General Meeting for the whole of Maryland, at which "many things were opened for edification and comfort," and the organisation was put into permanent working condition. " Parting in great tenderness, in the sense of the heavenly life," Fox sailed away for Bristol, leaving behind a strong group of Friends stretching, with some breaks, from the coast of New Hampshire to Albemarle Sound in the Carolinas, and having accomplished a piece of colonial missionary labour which, so far as I know, no visitor to America in colonial times paralleled.^ From a letter written in 1674 by three Virginia Friends to Bristol Monthly Meeting in England, we learn that George Fox's labours had borne great fruit. " Our meetings are at this time more than doubled, and a large convincement is upon many who as yet stand off" [i.e. do not join in membership].^ In 1676-77 the Southern colonies received another extensive visit from William Edmundson, whose wilderness travels on this visit reach about the climax of hardship ' In the MS. Journal of Fox's American journey he estimates that he travelled 16,149 miles. - Bowden, i. 356. CH.I QUAKERS IN SOUTHERN COLONIES 289 and difficulty. One sample of the sort of thing he went through will perhaps be sufficient : " It was very cold, foul weather [on the Patuxent river], sleet and snow, and we were all day and most of the night before we got to the place intended. When we got to shore I could neither go nor stand, except as two bore me up, one by each arm, I had such pains and weakness in my back and groins with piercing cold. . . . We were forced to stay thre6 nights on a small island, the weather being foul and stormy. We had no shelter but the open skies, the wet ground to lie on. This augmented my cold and pain, but the Lord bore up my spirit, and enabled me to bear it." ^ He found the " affairs of truth " a good deal out of order in Virginia — " there were many unruly spirits to deal with, but I had good service and success." It was the period of the Bacon Rebellion, and the " country was in great trouble," but " Friends kept clear." Then follows in the Journal a notable passage that reveals the spirit in which these Quaker missionaries did their work : " Now I was moved of the Lord to go to Carolina, and it was perilous travelling, for the Indians were not yet subdued, but did mischief, and murdered several. The place they haunted much was in that wilderness betwixt Virginia and Carolina ; scarce any durst travel that way unarmed. Friends endeavoured to dissuade me from going, ... so I delayed some time. In the meantime I appointed a meeting on the north side of the James River, where none had been, and there came several Friends a great way in boats. There came also the widow Holland's eldest son, with whom I walked near two miles the night before the meeting, advising him about some disorders in the family, and so we parted ; . . . but before morning a messenger came to tell me that the young man was dead. Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying : ' All lives are in my hand, and if thou goest not to Carolina, thy life is as this young man's ; but if thou goest, I will give thee thy life for a prey.' . . . The next day I made ready for my journey, but none durst venture with me, save one ancient man, a Friend." ^ He had "many precious meetings" along the Albemarle, revisited his old Friends who were convinced on the former visit, saw "several turned to the Lord," and found the ' Journal, pp. 97-98. ° Ibid. pp. 99-100. U 290 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES BK.,ni people generally " tender and loving." " There was no room," he writes, " for priests [i.e. paid ministers], for Friends were finely settled, and I left things well amongst them " — and the old soldier in both kinds of warfare turned his face homeward, never again to help "settle truth's affairs " in the colonies where he had laboured so faithfully to plant Quakerism. There was another period of Quaker suffering in Virginia between 1675 and the accession in 1680 of Lord Culpepper to the Governorship, who was inclined to spare the Quakers. Under date of 15th June 1675, the record states that " The Hon'ble Governor being informed that there are several conventicles [of the Quakers] in Nansemond county, it is ordered by this court that they be proceeded against according to the laws of England and this country," and the Justices of the lower counties of Virginia were instructed to make strict inquiry, and to proceed against any person who meets in a conventicle. There are, too, definite entries of fines against persons who have refused to have their children baptized, or who have " suffered meetings of Quakers at their houses," or who have been " living as man and wife without legal marriage," i.e. who have married according to Friends rules.^ The Friends in Maryland endeavoured to assist their suffering brethren in Virginia during this period, and under direction of the Meeting at Tredhaven, in December 1690, William Berry and Stephen Keddy undertook the service of relieving the sad state and condition of the Church in Virginia.^ For a hundred years after the first planting of Quaker- ism in Virginia, Maryland, and the Carolinas — that is, from the middle of the seventeenth to the middle of the eighteenth century — it continued to grow and expand with some eddies and backwashes. There was here, as in New England, an almost unbroken succession of itinerant preachers who year after year visited all the Quaker centres in their rounds and often broke new ground and ' Weeks, Soutliern Quakerism and Slavery, pp. 43-45. ^ Janney, History of Friends, ii. 359. c„., QUAKERS IN SOUTHERN COLONIES 291 so formed new centres. Whenever a prominent Friend migrated to a pioneer locality he carried his-Quakerism with him as he did his household stuff, and his house was likely to become the centre of a new Quaker church. The itinerant ministers in their travels found their way to the homes of these isolated Friends, and on their arrival a meeting was sure to be appointed for the neighbourhood, and if " convincements " were made, as generally happened, the " circle " would increase and become a " meeting." Vat Journals of these itinerant workers show the steady increase of the Quaker Society during the century, as I have indicated. The most important of these Journals for tracing the growth and life of the Society are those of Thomas Story, Thomas Chalkley, Samuel Bownas, John Fothergill, and John Richardson. A few illustrations from Thomas Story's Journal will be sufficient to show the type of work done by these travellers at the close of the seventeenth century, the date of the following itinerant service being 1698. Thomas Story and his companion Roger Gill sailed up the York River, Virginia, the iith of February, and held their first meeting at the house of Edward Thomas — " a Friend who was zealous for Truth " — at Bangor House on Queen Creek : " Several who were not Friends were tendered, and this was the first fruit of our ministry in this country." On the 15 th, a meeting was held sixteen miles from Bangor House, at Daniel Akehurst's on Warwick River- — " a good meeting." ^ Next day they were at Martin's Hundred at the house of Robert Perkins. On the 21st, a meeting was held at Scimmins [spelled many ways in the Journals'\ in York county, " where no meeting had been before," and " John Bates and his wife were convinced of Truth" — a very important " convincement." The next day Story was back at Bangor House where William Clayborn, captain of the militia, grandson of the famous Colonel Clayborn, was won to the Quaker cause. " At the foot of Queen's Creek," Thomas Cary and Miles Cary and their families " were comforted, having been lately convinced." Across ' We shall hear of this Daniel Akehurst later as a man of note. 292 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. m the James River at Chuckatuck, Thomas Story visited the old Massachusetts hero of persecution, " our ancient Friend John Copeland, the first of those who had their ears cut in New England for the testimony of Truth." " At my request," Story says, " he showed us his right ear ! " The Friends of the neighbourhood came in and they had together "a tender season of God's love." Meetings followed at Derasconeck, Western Branch [of James River], " where several confessed Truth"; Southern Branch, " where the Grace of God was plentiful, the people were tendered, and the meeting was in the dominion of Truth " ; and at Barbican, " the last meeting in Virginia toward Carolina." In this town was a " priest [i.e. established minister] who, being taken with an infirmity in his tongue and limbs, had not preached much for five years, and the people, being just to their own interest, paid him only as often as he exercised his faculty ! They gave him a hogshead of tobacco for every sermon, but no sermon no tobacco." From here the travellers (Nathan Newby of Virginia going as companion) passed down into North Carolina,, "through a wilderness, there being no house in all that way ; we ate bread and cheese and drank of the brook."' At the head of Perquimans Creek they came to the house of Francis Toms, " who was one of the Provincial Council " — evidently William Edmundson's convert. They had a large meeting, " several persons of note " attending, after which they were entertained by the lieutenant-governor of the colony. Prominent Friends mentioned in this region are Thomas Simons, Henry White, Gabriel Newby, Stephen Scott, and Anne Wilson. On his northward passage through Virginia, Thomas Story had very successful meetings in the old centres and in some new ones, and we get a good glimpse of the wide extent of Quaker influence. " At Pagan Creek," he writes,. " we had a large assembly, most of whom were not Friends, and the power of the Lord was gloriously with us." The visitors were in most places " treated with beer and wine,'' or " had a little cyder " or " punch made of drams, sugar c„., QUAKERS IN SOUTHERN COLONIES 293 and nutmeg in horn cups," nobody yet having any scruple about such things. The places mentioned where meetings were held are Chuckatuck, Elizabeth River, Elizabeth Town, Southern Branch, Levy Neck, Lion's Creek, Burleigh (where James John was the leading Friend), Curies, Black Creek, Mattapany River, Powmunky Neck (where Captain Clayborn had his plantation, " in a wilder- ness region every way " and where " several were tendered "). At Hickory Neck, where no meeting had ever been before, a large gathering was held — " some people were tendered though a few persons were airy ! " At York City they held " the first meeting of Friends that had been there " — "the people were rude and senseless of good." At Pocoson, " where there had never been a meeting before," there was a " divine shining of the Light." At Kickatan, "things of great moment were opened," and " the daughter of that unhappy apostate, George Keith " was brought to "gentle tears" and hope was raised "that she might be restored to the Truth." At a great meeting at Remuncock "many persons of note in those parts" attended, among them Major Palmer, Captain Clayborn, and Dr. Walker, " all of whom were sedate and some broken." His travels in Maryland were not so extensive as in the colonies farther south, since he had the opportunity of attending the Yearly Meeting for Maryland where he met most of the Friends of that Colony. It was held on the Western Shore, and was " very full " and for two days " peaceable," " the good presence of the Lord in it," but on the third day there occurred a furious discussion with two " priests," and all the issues between the established church and the Quakers were threshed over. Naturally Thomas Story felt that " the invisible Truth came over their lofty and self-confident heads," and he reports with satisfaction that " several Justices who were present expressed their sentiments altogether in our favour." ^ We learn from Story's Journal that the " only A good illustration of the popular interest which was aroused by such dis- ™ssions appears in Story's account of his next visit to the Western Shore a year Tk"' ^ ' ' P"^^' ' ' "^^""^ '° ""^ meeting for a discussion. He was on horseback ; loomas Story stood on a bench outside the meeting-house, a large company 294 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. m ministering Friend at that time in ail those parts " [the Western Shore of Maryland] was Anne Galloway, who was " an honest, innocent, lively, and honourable Friend in the Truth who was everywhere acceptable in her service." ^ Samuel Bownas gives one or two interesting glimpses of Southern Quakerism in the eighteenth century, the date of his visit being 1726. " The Yearly Meeting in Maryland," he says, "is held four days, three for worship and one for business. Many people resort to it and transact a deal of trade one with another, so that it is a kind of market or change, where captains of ships or planters meet and settle their affairs ; and this draws abundance of people of the best rank to it ! " ^ He gives a valuable passage for the light it throws on colonial travel : "I met a Friend from London, his name was Joshua Fielding, who had visited Virginia and South Carolina, and had travelled by land about five hundred miles in three weeks, mostly alone, a difficult and hazardous attempt, but he got through safe though he had no provision but what he carried with him, and met with but about four or five houses or plantations in all the five hundred miles travel [from South Carolina to Virginia] which obliged him to lodge in the woods frequently. Having a small pocket-compass it was his guide, when sun and stars were hid from him."* It was through just such faith and pluck and tireless effort that Quakerism was planted in this long stretch of coast from the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake to Charleston, South Carolina. Edmund Peckover, who travelled extensively through the Southern Colonies in 1742, gives many interesting glimpses of life and religious conditions as they were at this time. He is on the whole impressed with tendencies gathered round, when to the discomfiture of the priest a woman shouted : ' ' You refused to baptize my five children, unless I would give a hogshead of tobacco for each one of them. Now I don't care one farthing for your baptism." The service " ended in divine peace and consolation." — Story, p. 229. 1 I have drawn my information from pp. 153-176 of Thomas Story's Jouma.1, edition of 1747. ^ Bownas's Journal, p. 140. ' Ibid. p. 139. CH.I QUAKERS IN SOUTHERN COLONIES 295 toward decline in spiritual life and power of Quakerism in Maryland. He laments that many worthy Friends in the Choptank region of Maryland have recently died and that " many of their offspring come very far short of them " — few even keep up " the outward appearances " ; but he prophesies that "a good visitation hangs over their head." Spiritual affairs are, he thinks, " at a low ebb " in the odier parts of Maryland — the offspring of the "antient worthies " are as " gaudy and fine in their apparel as any who go under our name either at London or Bristol ! " He finds a much more encouraging state of affairs in Virginia — "a good visitation has been extended to the inhabitants of those parts " ; Friends " are growing in the Best Sense and have several ministers among them." ^ He was, too, favourably impressed with North Carolina. He found five meeting-houses in the compass of thirty miles with large meetings and " many solid, weighty, good Friends." " Six or seven hundred persons attend these meetings, and there are nine or ten persons gifted in ministry, with more developing." '" During the last half-century of the colonial period — roughly from 1725 to 1775 — there occurred a large and very influential migration of Friends from Pennsylvania and colonies farther north, especially from Nantucket in New England, to the Southern Colonies. It is diiificult to discover the reasons for this extensive shifting of popula- tion in a country not at all thickly settled, but it was probably due in the last analysis to economic reasons. In any case it was this migration of solid Quaker families, building a chain of flourishing meetings across Maryland and Virginia and down into North Carolina, that began a new epoch for Quakerism in these colonies, and prepared the way for the powerful migration of Quakers to the west during the next century. The movement began with the migration of a group of ^ The places visited in Virginia by Peckover were Caroline, Cedar Creek, Swamp Meeting, Black Creek, ViTain Oak, Surry, Pagan Creek, West Branch, Nansemond, Chuckatuck, Blackwater, Notaway, Burleigh, Warwick, Curies, and Genitee. ^ Journal of Friends Historical Society , i. 96-99. 296 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. m Friends from Salem, New Jersey, and another group from Nottingham, Pennsylvania, to the country along the Monocacy River, a tributary of the Potomac, in Mary- land. Sometime before 1730 a meeting, called " Mono- quesy," was formed in this region, near the present village of Buckeystown. This was the first migration of Friends toward the west and away from the navigable waters, a movement which has ever since continued. In 1732 a migration southward was undertaken by Alexander Ross and a company of Pennsylvania and Maryland Friends, who secured from the Governor and Council of Virginia one hundred thousand acres of land for a colony on Opequan Creek, another tributary to the Potomac. This led to the formation of two meetings, Opequan and Providence, which were formed into Hopewell Monthly Meeting in 1735.^ In 1745 Fairfax Monthly Meeting was established in what was then Fairfax County, but now Loudoun County.^ From this beginning the move- ment spread southward, frequently increased by large migration from Pennsylvania, until there were twenty meetings for worship, five monthly meetings, and one quarterly meeting in this section of Virginia. A south- ward movement continued, and from the middle of 'the century onward meetings sprang up in the south-central counties of Virginia. One of the most interesting episodes of this Quaker expansion in Virginia during the middle years of the eighteenth century, was the formation of a Quaker centre at Lynchburg, due to the pioneer work of Charles Lynch and his wife (Ann Terrell) of Cedar Creek Meeting. They were married in 1755, and pushed out from home to settle a large tract of unoccupied land in the beautiful region about the present city of Lynchburg. The Indians broke up the little meeting which Lynch and his wife started ; but, undaunted, the devoted pioneers took the meeting to their own house, and went bravely and tactfully to work to change the attitude of the ' This was for some years called Opequan Monthly Meeting. 2 All the Meetings mentioned above belonged, until 1789, to Chester Quarterly Meeting in Pennsylvania. CH.I QUAKERS IN SOUTHERN COLONIES 297 Indians from one of hostility to one of peace and fellowship. The same current of migration pushed farther on, and brought fresh streams of Quakerism into North Carolina. It was this influx of families from the north that builded the Quaker meetings in Alamance, Chatham, Guilford, Randolph, and Surry counties, and gave Quakerism in the south and west future promise and increased spiritual power. One of the most important Quaker settlements which this migration brought about was that at New Garden in Guilford County. It was begun about 1750, and the monthly meeting of that name was established in 1754. Between 1754 and 1770, eighty-six Friends became members of this monthly meeting by migration to this section of North Carolina. Of these, forty-five came from Pennsylvania, thirty-five from Virginia, one from Maryland, and four from north-eastern North Carolina.^ The migrations from Nantucket were of later date, and were even more numerous. The first date in the minutes of New Garden Monthly Meeting for the latter is 1771. After that time the records abound in names ever since then familiar in the annals of North Carolina Yearly Meeting, and also in those Yearly Meetings of the West which were largely composed of Friends, who, during the anti-slavery agitation and the distressing period just before the Civil War, emigrated to the free soil beyond the Ohio River. Within a period of five years there were no less than forty-one certificates from Nantucket in New Garden Monthly Meeting alone, and other Friends settled within the limits of Cane Creek Monthly Meeting. Many of these were young unmarried men, who were seeking to improve their fortunes. The island of Nantucket was crowded, two-thirds of its population being Friends — and its hardy sons were ready for adventure and pioneer life. In many instances they secured the latter without a corresponding increase in estate, and moved on into Weeks's Southern Quakerism and Slavery, p. 105. For further details of this migration see Weeks, op. cit. pp. 96-108 ; Janney's History of Friends, iii. «'t8-a49 ; and Life and Labours of William Reckitt. 298 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. m South Carolina and Georgia to found settlements and meetings which have entirely vanished. The minutes abound in declarations of intentions of marriage, and these Nantucket men were soon united with daughters of Pennsylvania, and from these two sources in the main is the birthright membership of North Carolina Yearly Meeting derived. There was also some admixture of Welsh and German blood. This migration came simultane- ously with what is known as the Scotch-Irish migration. Through this channel the strong Presbyterian element which has since existed in Central Carolina was introduced. These two influences, in many respects diverse, were thus simultaneously established on Southern soil. They continued to exist side by side with little friction until the outbreak of the Civil War. At that time the question of slavery forced an antagonism which the War of the Revolution did not engender. The Scotch- Irish were ready to iight. The Friends maintained their principle of peace, and abstained from participation in politics, contenting themselves with the rigorous insistence upon the rules of discipline, educational and business affairs, leaving the others pretty much in political authority. There is little definite light available on the early settlement of Quakerism in South Carolina. The first public document referring to the coming of the Quakers to the Southern Colony is a letter written by Lord Shaftesbury, June 9, 1675, to Andrew Percivall on the Ashley River. The letter is as follows : " There is coming in my Dogger [small ship], Jacob Waite and too or three other familys of those who are called Quakers. These are but Harbengers of a great number that intend to : follow. 'Tis their purpose to take up a whole colony for them- ; selves and theire Friends. I have writ to the Governor and Councell about them and directed them to set them out iz,ooo ; acres. I would have you be very kind to them and give them all the assistance you can in a choice of place or anything else ' that may conduce to theire convenient settlement. For they ; are people I have great regard to and am obliged to care of I :; am your affectionate friend, Shaft^esbury." ^ ^ ^ Collections of Historical Society of South Carolina, v. 464. cH. I QUAKERS IN SOUTHERN COLONIES 299 Some letters from John Jennings of Barbadoes to Edward Mayo and Jonathan Pitts of South Carolina, written 1679, have recently come to light, showing that the Barbadoes Quaker had sent five slaves to the Carolina Quakers. He asks his correspondents to return one of the " negromen," and to sell the rest for " Porke or Tobacco or bills of exchange," though he says, " if I had been sensible of what I now am [sensible of] I should not a sent them to that place," ^ In 1 68 1 George Pox, by epistle, endeavoured to bring the Friends in South Carolina into organic relation with the North Carolina Friends. He wrote : "If you of Ashley River [S.C] and you of Albemarle [N.C.] had once a year, or once a half-year, a meeting together some- where in the middle of the country, it might be well." ^ But the distance between the two settlements and the difficulties of travel made a union of forces impossible. We get a slight glimpse of these Charleston Friends in 1 7 1 3 from Thomas Chalkley's Journal : " After a month at sea " [in passage from Philadelphia] he writes, " it pleased God that we arrived at Charleston in South Carolina. We had a meeting there and divers others afterwards. There were but few Friends in this province, yet I had several meetings in the country. The people were generally loving, and received me kindly. . . . The longer I staid the larger our meetings were."* He visited the Governor, who said that he " deserved encouragement" in his mission. As the country grew in population Friends about Albemarle Sound gradually pushed south, and a chain of meetings was formed down the coast of North Carolina. Core Monthly Meeting was established in 1733 in Carteret County, and Falling Creek Monthly Meeting was set up in what is now Lenoir County in 1748. Weeks says that by the middle of the eighteenth century there were probably Quaker Meetings for worship in ^ Journal of Friends Historical Society, vii. 65-66. " Bowden, i. 413. ' Journal, p. 80. 300 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. m Hyde, Beaufort, Craven, Carteret, Jones, Bladen, and Lenoir counties,^ so that the great gap between the Quaker settlements in the two Carolinas was fast closing up. But Quakerism never flourished in the great Southern Colony. Mary Peasley (afterwards Mary Neale) and Catherine Peyton (afterwards Philips) visited Charleston in 1753, and found a group of Friends there "who walk in the sight of their own eyes and the imagination of their own hearts, without being accountable to any for their conduct." ^ Samuel Fothergill was at Charleston in 1755, and he writes : " I am here amongst a poor handful of professors, and I believe I must visit all their families." ^ But there was one Quaker in South Carolina who did not " walk in the sight of her own eyes, nor in the light of her own imagination," and she was no mere " professor." This was Sophia Hume, a native of the Province, a grand- daughter of Mary Fisher of Boston fame, a person of some refinement and culture, and a woman of very unusual religious experience, who, in 1747, issued An Exhortation to the Inhabitants of South Carolina} The book was written under a powerful sense of compulsion — " I would not have you imagine that any consideration less than the Favour of God could have prevailed on me to appear in print " — and she believed unmistakably that she was utter- ing a divinely-given word, and not " the productions of an enthusiastick brain." I shall give her message in a few words to show what the best Friends of this period held to be essential. " There is one truth," she says, " on which all I have to say to you greatly depends, namely, that all mankind have within them a measure and manifestation of the ^ Southern Quakers and Slavery, p. 87. - Memoir of Catherine Philips (1797), pp. 63-101. " Memoirs of Samuel Fothergill, p. 173. Friends were even less successful in spreading their truth in Georgia. Samuel Fothergill went into Georgia, and he remarks that George Whitefield hurried to get there ahead of him to ' ' save the flock," but there was little permanent result from Fothergill's visit. A Quaker settlement was, however, made in the Colony in 1758 near Augusta, and another settlement was made in what is now M 'Duffie county in 1770. For details see Weeks's Southern Quakers and Slavery, pp. 117-124. * First edition printed in Philadelphia by Benjamin Franklin in 1748. CH.I QUAKERS IN SOUTHERN COLONIES 301 Light, Spirit, or Grace of God, so that salvation is a matter of personal obedience."^ Then comes her own testimony : " I myself have through the Grace of God and the obedience of faith witnessed the Peace of God myself, and am greatly concerned for the inhabitants of my native country to have this same Peace." ^ She declares her belief that it is possible by strict obedience to the inward Guest and Guide of the soul to walk in the light, and she wisely says that the true test of guidance is the discovery that our actions promote peace, goodwill,, charity, and benevolence in the neighbourhood, " for such actions proceed from no other than God."^ She says "the first day's work of the new creation in my soul was that happy season when God opened my eyes, and appeared in the Beauty of Holiness to my soul."* She insists rightly that the reason the heavenly Jerusalem does not come in our age is that Christians are no longer sensible of the presence of God, no longer have the Gospel- Power, do not live in the Eternal Spirit, and substitute words and outward services for Spirit and Life.'' And^ she drives home to her " friends and neighbours " — in fact she says that she has come back from England under "the constraint of the Almighty" to tell them — that "Religion is a heart-work, the battle is an inward one, nothing counts but victory over sin, nothing but the inward possession of the Love of God. God visits you, the Voice of the Spirit calls you. Obedience will bring the Light and Truth into your inward parts, and you may be the Redeemed of the Lord." * It is a simple little book, with some chaff, but with some real wheat in it, and it gives a clear idea of the type of preaching which was heard in all the meetings of the South as the itinerant messengers came among them. ^ Substance of pp. 5-7. ^ P. 10. ' P. 17. * Condensed, pp. 22-23. " PP' 140-141. ° P- 156 seq. CHAPTER II THE GROUP LIFE AND WORK OF SOUTHERN FRIENDS The little groups of Friends which began to form in Maryland in 1656, in Virginia in 1658, and in North Carolina in 1671, gradually developed here as elsewhere into organised meetings for worship and for "truth's affairs." At first the meeting for worship, where the little local group gathered in the living faith that God was a real presence among them, was almost the whole of Quakerism. Those who were newly "convinced" quietly marked their change by a severer simplicity of outward life, by the unvarying use of " thou " and " thee," instead of " you " for a single person, by refusal to remove the hat as a mark of etiquette or honour, by the absolute omission of every kind of oath, and by attendance of the meeting for worship twice each week at the home of some leading Friend in the Community. For the first dozen years in Maryland and Virginia the organisation of the Society was a very slender affair.^ No central meeting was held in either Colony prior to 1672, and the local meetings for business were irregularly held, and dealt with but few matters, such as the suffer- ings of members subjected to persecution, the marriage of members, the needs of poor families, the times and places of holding meetings, and exercised perhaps some general oversight over the " walk and conversation " of those who constituted the " meeting." ^ For example, Burnyeat found in 1665 that under the influence of John Perrot Friends in Virginia had ' ' quite forsaken their meetings, and did not meet together once in a year." — Burnyeat's Jmimal, p. 188. 302 c„. ,1 GROUP LIFE AND WORK 303 The earliest attempts at organisation of the Society in ^ese colonies were made by Josiah Coale and George Rofe, both of whom were men of the constructive type ; but the work of systematic organisation was finally carried through by John Burnyeat, George Fox, and William Edmundson. Burnyeat began his constructive work in the two colonies in 1665, but he carried it much farther in 1671-72. He travelled through the Virginia towns where there were Friends in the autumn of 167 1, and advised them to hold a men's meeting for business affairs. In the following spring he performed the same service in Maryland, and arranged a General Meeting for the Colony at West River to be held in April, which George Fox, opportunely landing from Jamaica, attended. In the summer of 1672 William Edmundson found affairs unsettled and out of order in Virginia, and he appointed "a men's meeting for settling Friends in the Way of Truth's Discipline," and, upon his return from North Carolina a few weeks later, this appointed men's meeting was held for settling the affairs of the Society. Edmundson writes : "The Lord's Power was with us in the Men's Meeting, and Friends received Truth's Discipline in the Love of it, as formerly they had received the Doctrine of Truth. Before I left those Parts Friends desired another Men's Meeting ; so we appointed another." ^ This proved to be a very large meeting, and was occupied with " the affairs of the Church " : " to provide for poor widows and fatherless children : to take care that no disorders were committed in the Society, and to see that all lived orderly according to what they professed." ^ These accounts show plainly enough that previous to this time the organisation was of the loosest character, business meetings being held only at the call of some travelling Friend with a constructive turn of mind. George Fox continued this organising work, " wonderfully opening " to the people the use and value of meetings for Church affairs ; and when he sailed for England he could ' Journal, p. 60. ^ Itid. p. 62. 304 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk.ii, honestly say that "Friends in those parts are well established in the Truth." The earliest official document from Friends in Mary- land is an epistle from the General Meeting for the colony held at West River, June 6, 1674, and addressed " to the Men's Meeting of Friends in Bristol," England. The epistle is largely occupied with homily, but there are a few living passages in it which reveal the condition of these people who have formed themselves into a Society. " We truly desire," they say, " to tread and walk in the blessed truth." " Much people there be in our country," the epistle states, " that comes to hear truth declared, which in its eternal authority is over all and many there be that by it are convicted." ^ No minutes of any Quaker meeting in Maryland are extant for a date earlier than 1677, the first surviving minute being that of a Men's Meeting held at the house of Wenlock Christison on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake, March 24, 1677. Christison is the old hero who had braved the dangers of missionary activity in Massachusetts and had been condemned to die on the Boston gallows, but was finally released and given his life. He settled, not long after his " escape," at Tredhaven in Talbot County, and became one of the leading person- alities and one of the foremost influences in the Maryland Society ; but his heroism and his distinction as an apostle who had suffered much did not raise him above the judgment of his fellow-members. He had been valiant for the truth in Boston, and had steered his course straight on through all the wiles of the enemy, but evidently he had succumbed to the attraction of some woman " not of the Society." The Men's Meeting in July held at his own house " took him under dealing " : " Att our Mans Meeting at Wenlock Christison's house ye 14th of 5th mo. [July] 1677, Wenlock Christison declared in ye meeting that if ye world or any particular person should speak evilly of ye Truth or reproach Friends concerning his proceedings 1 The original copy is on the Bristol Minutes. It is printed in Bowden, L 379- cH. n GROUP LIFE AND WORK 305 in taking his wife, that then he would give further satisfaction and clear ye Truth and Friends by giving forth a paper to condemn his hasty and forward proceedings in ye matter, and he said that were ye thing to do again he would not proceed so hasty, nor without consent of Friends." For many years the General Meeting for the Colony, consisting both of " a Men's Meeting " and " a Women's Meeting," were held alternately at half-year periods on the Western Shore and the Eastern Shore. Monthly Meetings were also held dating probably from the time of Fox's visit, at the localities where there were large numbers of Friends. The Minutes of the Men's Meeting for 1679 held on the Western Shore received reports from several local meetings of the Monthly type, as follows : Severn, South River, West River, " The Cliffs," Herring Creek, Fatuxent, Muddy Creek, Accomack, Anamessicks, Munny, Choptank, Tuckahoe, Betties Cove, Bay Side, and Chester River. Quarterly Meet- ings began in Maryland, as far as the records indicate, in 1679. One was organised that year for the Western Shore "to be kept at Ann Chew's house at Herring Creek for the easing of the Monthly Meeting and Half Years Meeting, so that they may not be so much con- cerned with outward matters." ^ Another Quarterly Meeting was established on the Eastern Shore, probably the same year, as the first official reference to it occurs under date of 14th November 1679. ^-^ The earliest minutes contain interesting information of the way the meeting funds were raised and expended. All the funds of these meetings in the primitive days were in terms of tobacco. In 1677 the Friends of the Eastern Shore " thought it fitt and meet " to gather a "stock" or general fund, "for the service of Truth," "every Friend being left to his freedom what to give," and for the care of the poor, for which purpose the members contributed 8650 pounds of tobacco. A similar fund was raised for the Western Shore and "kept at John Gary's for the service of Truth." Eighteen hundred ' Minutes of Men's Meetings, 4th July 1679. X 3o6 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES BK.m pounds of tobacco out of this latter fund were used to purchase " a shallop for Friends' service," as a boat furnished the readiest method of travel to and from meetings along the shores of the Chesapeake. All the meetings of every type were held in the homes of members during the first twenty years of the history of the Society. The first meeting-house built in the Colony was at Betties Cove on the Eastern Shore, and by the minutes of a Men's Meeting held at Wenlock Christison's in 1678 it appears that this house was at that time still unfinished, for it was then decided to " loft it," and to " partition it with falling windows hung on hinges," but for a long time even after this Friends continued to hold "house- meetings " in most localities of Maryland. In Virginia there were no regular, settled meetings " for the affairs of Truth " before the visits of Fox and Edmundson. The General Meeting for the entire Colony was begun at the suggestion of George Fox in 1673. Fox's letter to the scattered Friends of the Colony is a brief and lucid expression of the true idea of a Quaker meeting : " Meet to geather in the power and wisdom of God and keep a mans meeting and see that all who proffeseth the Lord and Glorious Gospel of Christ Jesus may walk in it and stand by Righteousness and holiness as becomes the house of God, and stand for Gods glory and his name, so that all that doe proffes Ms Name may nott dishonor it nor cause his name to be blasphemed, nor Ms gracious truth to be evill spoken off, and see that nothing be lacking amongst ffriends meetings; and see that you all be as one famyly together in the house of God." ^ The earliest monthly meetings in the Colony go back to about the same date as the central General Meeting — 1673, though no official accounts appear from this primitive stage. Chuckatuck Monthly Meeting was certainly in existence in 1683, and Curies (later called Henrico) was established in 1698. White Oak Swamp Monthly Meeting was established in 1 700 and Nansemond, ' Minutes of Lower Virginia Meeting. • GH.II GROUP LIFE AND WORK 307 Pagan Creek, Surry, Wain Oak, and Warwick have records dating from 1702.^ The first Quarterly Meeting in the Colony was Lower Virginia Quarterly Meeting which was established at least as early as 1696. It was known, as most of these Virginia Meetings were known, under many variant names. Upper Virginia Quarterly Meeting dates from 1700, and in 1706 the Lower Quarterly Meeting was divided, forming a new one occupying the middle section of the Quaker region under the name of Chuckatuck. North Carolina Yearly Meeting was organised in 1698, as appears from a minute of the Quarterly Meeting held at the house of Henry White the 4th of June 1698 : "It was unanimous agreed by friends . . . that on the last seventh-day of the 7th month in Every yere to be the yerely meeting for this Cuntree at the house of ffrancis tooms [Toms] the Elder, and the second day of the weke following to be seat apart for business." The Quarterly Meeting at which this action was taken was Eastern Quarterly Meeting which was established probably in 1681 for Friends in Pasquotank, Perquimans, and Northampton Counties. The earliest monthly meeting record for this Colony is that of one held at the house of Francis Toms in 1680, though according to the usual custom of Friends there were probably meetings " for the affairs of Truth" much earlier than this. By the year ' I give as complete a list of Virginia Monthly Meetings as I have been able to make out : Black Water ....... Established 1757 Caroline (sometimes called Cedar Creek) . . ,, 1739 Chuckatuck . . . Known to be in existence as early as 1683 Curies (later called Henrico) .... Established 1698 Denby ........ ,, 1716 Fairfax ........ ,, 1744 Hopewell ,, 1735 Isle of Wight .... Records under this name begin 1767 Nansemond ..,.,, ,, ,, 1702 Pagan Creek , ,, ,, 1702 South River Established 1757 Surry ........ „ 1702 Wainoak ,, 1702 Warwick ........ ,, 1702 White Oak Swamp (probably a variant name for some other Monthly Meeting) ..... Dates from about 1 700 3o8 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. m 1700 there seem to have been three monthly meetings in this Colony : one at the house of Francis Toms in Perquimans County ; one at the house of Jonathan Phelps, also in Perquimans ; and one in Pasquotank. ^ The most impressive feature of these various meetings, stretching in a long chain of Quaker settlements from the Chesapeake on the North to Charleston on the South, was their watchful care over the outer and inner life of the membership — what the Friends of that time called " the walk and conversation." The paternalism of this early Quakerism would with difficulty be endured to-day, but it fitted the needs of that period well ; and it produced results in social morality and in individual character which could hardly have been surpassed under any freer methods. The quiet ministry to the necessities of the poor members, as it was managed by the Quaker Meeting, cannot be too highly praised. Every effort was made to assist the needy to help themselves and, where this was manifestly impossible, the administration of charity was handled in a most private and unobtrusive way. " Great care and serious weighing" was bestowed upon the estates, condition, and education of orphans committed to the oversight of Friends. By a minute of Maryland Yearly Meeting for 1678, provision was made that one person in every local meeting should be chosen to see that no orphan is abused, nor his estate wasted, and that proper opportunities for his education are supplied. The Women Friends, always alive to formative influences, ' I give the following list of the other Colonial Monthly Meetings in the Carolinas, compiled from the appendix of Weeks' Southern Quakers and Slavery ; Bush River ........ Founded 1770 Cane Creek, N. C. . . . . . . „ 1751 Cane Creek, S.C. ...... ,, I773 Carver's Creek ....... „ 1746 Centre ,, 1772 Contentnea ........ „ 1743 Core Sound . ....... ,, 1733 Deep River ........ „ 1778 Dunn's Creek ....... ,, 1746 Falling Creek „ 1748 Fredericksburg (later called Wateric) ... ,, 17S0 New Garden ....... ,, 1754 Rich Square ....... ,, 1760 Wells „ 1764 CH.II GROUP LIFE AND WORK 309 took up the subject of education at their Half Year's Meeting in Maryland in 1679, and adopted this quaint minute which probably bore some fruit : " We takeing it into serious Consideration Consuming our Childrens going to Scolle hath thought meett in ye wisdoum of god to giue ocation to all ffriends that those that are scoole masters may be Exhorted to teach their Children in ye practice boath in words, ways and actions wh beComes ye Blessed truth, and that we cannott, neither will, allow them to practice any of ye worlds liberty in any manner of practice wch ye truth alowes not, and alsoe its desired that ffriends be diligent to provide ffriends and scripture Boocks, and if possible to have a ffriend to be scool Master or Mistress. " This being presented to our brethren of ye Mens Meeting at ye time aforesaid they had Unity with it."i A similar " serious Consideration Consuming Childrens going to Scolle " appeared in all the other Quaker sections, and led to the establishment of a great many small schools for the " guarded " education — within rather severe limits — of the children of the membership. The meetings followed up their distant members, and exercised a paternal care over those who moved into towns where there was no meeting for them to attend. If a member was going on a journey far from home, he was supplied with an indorsed document from his meeting, which introduced him to Friends in the places to which he was going, and prepared the way for him as he travelled. A few concrete minutes will illustrate the manner in which these matters were handled. The first one is the case of a Friend who had moved from Mary- land to Virginia, and had consulted his meeting for advice whether he should stay or return. The Minute reads : "William Kuton very honestly applies to this Meeting for advice in order to his staying or removing from Rapahanock [Va.] Inasmuch as there is no ffriends meeting there but himself, he signifyeth that he finds something stirring in his heart with love of god to the people, and by himself hath not freedom to remove. He desires that if the Meeting do judge ^ Minutes of Women's Half Year's Meeting for 1679. 3IO QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. m it meet he should stay, they would take care that he may be visited on all opportunities that present, and that ffriends would acquaint travelling ffriends of that same, that so if possible the desire of his heart may be answered concerning that people. The Meeting approveth of what ye ffriend hath proposed, and doe advise that his request may be answered by ffriends on both shores as opportunity offereth." The following minute — from the year 1686 — is a good illustration of the care taken for journeying members : " Humphry Emerton laid before this Meeting his intention of a voyage for England about his outward concerns. This Meeting desires first to know the willingness of his wife, and in order thereto hath appointed Richard Harrison to discourse with her," and forthwith a document suitable to introduce him was prepared. When a Friend went out on a religious visit "a minute of unity" like the following was given to open the way for his message and service : "Our well beloved Friend and sister Anne Galloway laid before this Meeting, that she finding some drawings in the love of God to visit Friends in some parts of Pennsylvania, desired some lines by way of certificate of their unity with her. And whereas our beloved Friend Samuel Galloway hath informed this Meeting that he hath an intention of accompanying his wife in her intended journey (if extraordinary occasion prevents not) desires that he may have a few lines by way of certificate of Friends unity with him." Even as early as 1705, Friends in Maryland began to be disturbed by the excessive use of tobacco and spirituous liquors, and there are frequent minutes about this "concern of Truth." The earliest minute which I have found on the subject, under date of 1705, will indicate the way they dealt with the difficulty : "This Meeting having a weighty sense upon their minds concerning the immoderate use of Tobacco, does advise that all may forbear the abuse of the same, and that those friends that are appointed to give accompt of the state of the Meeting they belong to may forbear the excess of smoking themselves, and also caution and advise all friends against the immoderate use of CH.II GROUP LIFE AND WORK 311 the same, and that they give accompt to the Monthly Meeting what progress they have made therein." 1 The Friends in Maryland were troubled for many years by the sale of liquors in the near neighbourhood of the meeting-house at the time of their Yearly Meeting. The occasion was seized upon by " the world's people " as a good time to "transact trades," and, to the scandal of Friends, the meeting-place was made " a kind of market or change where the captains of ships and the planters met and settled their affairs." The Friends were pleased to have " the abundance of people from the country round about" flock in, but they were also determined to " prevent ye buying of drink at the time of Yearly Meeting," and thereupon they addressed the government of Maryland "for ye prevention and suppressing of the evil practice with the evil consequences attending it." ^ Their appeal was in due time effective, for an Act was passed in 1725, preventing the sale of liquors in booths within one mile of the Quaker meeting-house in Talbot County, or within two miles of the meeting-house near West River in Ann Arundel County.' Virginia Friends took the position, as Friends else- where did in the early stage of moral awakening on these matters, that liquor-drinking must be done, if at all, in moderation. The Yearly Meeting of 1704 expressed in a minute the advice that members of the Society "do keep out of unnecessary providing of strong drink, and do keep in Christian moderation at times of births, burials, or marriages." * One of the most amusing minutes ^ Minutes of the Yearly Meeting for 1705. ' Minutes of Yearly Meeting for 171 1. ^ Bacon's Laws 1725, chapter 5. * It was not until 1782 that Virginia Yearly Meeting took action prohibiting the distillation of liquor by their members : "The Meeting being deeply concerned at this time to endeavour to remove from amongst us such things as appear to be an evil tendency, and as the distilling spirits from grain is beUeved to be wrong, Friends are therefore hereby prohibited using grain of any sort in that manner ; and if any should continue so to do, such ought to be treated with as disregarding the unity of the body. And as trading in spirituous liquors, and frequent, and unnecessary use thereof hath also appeared to have many bad effects ; Friends are therefore advised against these practices. " 312 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. m on the subject of moderation came from North Carolina, where Friends were urged to "use tobacco with great moderation as a medison and not as a delightsome companion ! " ^ There was, however, a strange mingling of the large and the little, the important and the petty, in the paternal care which these meetings exercised. The moral and the merely ceremonial ran blurringly together. Dress, speech, and marriage with a companion " of the world" early came to be questions of first importance. In 1700 the Women's General Meeting for Maryland decided " under waity consideration, in the wisdom of God " to hold three times a year " a private meeting of the solidest women Friends to wait upon the Lord and to inspect into the most waitiest affairs of Truth " — these " waitiest affairs of Truth " being mainly matters of dress and marriage. A minute of this " private meeting," dated 1708, declares: " It Lies very Waityly uppon us to Desir all friends Profesing truth to be very Carefull to keep out of all Imytations of Fashghons which the world Runs into : Butt to keep to Plain- ness of Speach and Plainness in Dress in our Selves, and our Children ; Labouring in our Selves and with them to be clothed with ye meak spirit of Jesus as such as are waighting for his coming." Similar minutes come from every section of Quakerdom throughout the entire colonial period from the time when meetings for business affairs were organised. The follow- ing specimen minute from the North Carolina Records has a peculiarly naive flavour : "Friends are advised against wearing coats and other garments made after the new and superfluous fashions of the times, and no Friend is to wear a wig, but such as apply to the monthly meeting giving their reasons for so doing." But the subject of overwhelming importance was that of marriage, for it had early become a fixed idea with Friends that there should be no mixed marriages, i.e. marriages with persons " not of the Society." We have ' Quoted from Weeks's Southern Quakerism, p. 128. cH. II GROUP LIFE AND WORK 313 already seen how the Meeting on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake compelled its foremost member, Wenlock Christison, to apologise for his " hasty marriage," and it allowed no one to deviate " from good order " in this matter. As an illustration of the care taken even when both bride and groom were Friends, the following minute is of interest : " Att a Haifa Years Womens Meeting at the house of John Pitt ye 3rd of ye 5 mt. 1678. " Obadiah Judkins Lay'd a matter of maradge before us with Obedience Jenner and wee taking itt into Consideration, she Coming lately from England, thought it Requisite that they should stay till a Certificate can be secured, and in ye meantime they should dwell asunder." There are many such entries as this of the year 1687: "We are informed of a yong ffriendly woman dwelling at Choptank [Maryland] that is married to one of ye world and after ye manner of ye world ; ye care and consurn of which is referred to ye womens meeting on ye Eastern Shore." The women Friends of Maryland made a most drastic proposal in 1691 to force the children of the meeting to live up " to the testimony of Truth." " Itts the Sence of this Meeting that when Parents that have Children that Marries against and Contrary to their Parents mind, and shall give them any part of their outward Estates it is encoiragement for others to take the like disobedient Course and it is of bad Consequence, and this Meeting Advice is that all Friends that may be Concerned in like Case doe Refrain from iiidng such Rebellious Children any part of their outward Estates that soe such like Spiritts in Friends children may be discouraged and not encouraged." ^ By means of an extensive epistolary correspondence, beginning from the earliest organisation of the Society in America, the Friends, withdrawn from the rest of the " world," kept in constant rapport with each other. So long as George Fox lived, he wrote frequently to the 'This attitude toward "rebellious children" was adopted by the Men's Meeting both in Maryland and in Virginia. 314 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. m meetings in the colonies, and after his death his wife continued the correspondence. A minute of the Yearly Womens' Meeting at West River in 1699 reports : "An Apistle from our Dear friend Margaret fox from the Quarterly Meetting att Lancaster, In Old England was read in our Meeting and ffriends haueing True Unity with ye same and Desireing wee may Eye the great Love of Oure God in this and all things agreeable to his blessed truth to ye end of our Dayes, Doth appoint Eliz. Talbott, and Ann Galloway to Write and answer to the aboue Said Apistle and to send itt by the first opportunity In behalf of Said Meetting." The Yearly Meetings, both for men and for women,, all over the world sent Epistles to each other, and it was quite usual for the lower or subordinate meetings to send similar Epistles if special occasions called for such action,, or " if something rose freshly in the minds of any as a. living message." One of the most amusing incidents in this widespread intercourse of love and fellowship was the sending of two hogsheads of tobacco from the women Friends of Maryland to the women of London in 1678.. The minute of this " concern " says : " We hauing Reseaved many Episels from our dear friends in London and of late a Prcell of Boocks as a token of true love tO' our women's Meetting here in Maryland, it is agreed upon at this our generall Meetting to wright a Letf. from ye womens Meetting hear in Maryland to ye Womens Meetting in London and to send it with two hhd. of tobacco, and it is agreed upon that Eliz. Larance and Alice Gary doe take Care to prouide one hhd. for ye Western Shore, and Madgdelin Stevens and Sarah Thomas to privd one hhd. for ye Eastern Shore, and if possible they be sent together, and Margarett Berry is desired to wright ye Letter to ye womens Meetting in London." By the opening of the eighteenth century the Friends, were one people throughout the world, though there was absolutely no bond but love and fellowship. There was no visible head to the Society, no official creed, na ecclesiastical body which held sway and authority. But instead of being an aggregation of separate units the cH. II GROUP LIFE AND WORK 315 Society was in an extraordinary measure a living group. Friends had suffered together and they were baptized into one spirit. Wherever any Friend was in trouble the world over, all Friends, however remote, were concerned, and were ready to help share the trouble if it could be shared. The way in which Friends bore each other's burdens is well illustrated by a passage in an epistle to George Fox from the Half Year's Meeting in Maryland in 1683 : " There are many Friends in this province who find a concern laid upon them to visit the seed of God in Carolina, for we understand that the spoiler makes havoc of the flock there : so here are many weighty Friends intending to go down there on that service." 1 Every meeting took care of its own poor, and had a permanent poor-fund always ready. There is no unifier like love, and nothing creates the group-spirit as does the fellowship-interest. Nowhere except in the primitive Church has there been a more amazing interchange of fellowship, a more spontaneous itinerancy, than among the Friends. Harnack says : "At a time when Christianity was still a homeless religion, the occasional travels of brethren were frequently the means of bringing churches together, which otherwise would have had no common tie." ^ A living interest in the collective Church of Christ, he points out, throbbed with intensity through each particular Church, and the men of spiritual vision and leadership contributed themselves to the whole Church. So it was, too, in the formative period of Quakerism. The greatest and the best of the entire Society made their way from meeting to meeting, and from house to house — even into the cabin of the settler on the frontier — and they wove an invisible bond, stronger than the infallible decrees of Councils, which held the whole body together as an integral unit. Hospitality with the Quaker was not a virtue, it was an unconscious habit. His house was wide ' Quoted from Bowden, i. 385. ^ Th^ Mission and Expansion of Christianity, i. 179. 3i6 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. m open to every Friend who passed that way, and, especially on great meeting-days, there were practically no limits to the hospitality of board or bed. " Differences," disputes, and controversies between Friends were not taken into court, but were settled in meeting by the family method. However complex and complicated the affairs at issue might be, the meeting grappled with them, and brought order out of chaos. For example, two Friends in Virginia in 1749 had a financial difference, which the Monthly Meeting considered would, if continued, have " pernishous consequences to the trooth and its prosperity." The meeting took up the case, and induced the contenders to refer their controversy to the judgment of three Friends. It was thus settled satisfactorily, " brotherhood between them was preserved, and scandal was prevented."^ There are hundreds of similar arbitrations on the various minute books, and generally, if not always, the meetings proved able to settle the affair in dispute, and preserve brotherhood. The simplicity and artlessness of these colonial Friends appear in almost all their methods as a few samples will show. In 1702 Virginia Friends had "a deep and weighty sense" that the affairs of the Church could be improved, " if but one person should speak at a time," and the Yearly Meeting gave " wholesum counsil " to meetings everywhere to practise this plan of procedure, "which will be," the minute of advice says, "a sweet savour, we doubt not 1 " ^ In 1724 Thomas Pleasants asked to be released from the duties of clerk to his monthly meeting, " since it hath pleased the Lord to give him a few words to speak in the assemblies of God's people." A touchingly simple effort to advance " the truth " appears in a letter from two rural Friends in Henrico county, Virginia, in 1701. " Friends, wee thought to acquaint you that we are willing to have a First-day Meeting at our house, hoping it would be for the glory of the Lord, and the prosperity of his blessed Truth." ' Minutes of White Oak Swamp Monthly Meeting, 1749. ^ Minutes of Virginia Yearly Meeting for 1702. cH. 11 GROUP LIFE AND WORK 317 One of the earliest corporate activities of Friends in the Southern colonies was directed toward the achievement of religious freedom, because their very chance of survival as a religious people hung upon the attainment of such freedom. The system of Church uniformity weighed most severely in Virginia. Nowhere except in Massachusetts was the pressure so heavy, and, in the form of distraints for tithes, it was continued long after the New England Quakers were living in peace. The kind of persecution to which all Friends in Virginia were subjected in the eighteenth century may be seen in the laconic report of Thomas Jordan to his Monthly Meeting in 1 700 on his sufferings : "Six weeks Imprisonment for being Taken Att A Meeting in my own house and Released by the Kings Proclamation ; again taken at a meeting at Robert Lawrence, and bound ouer to the Court of Nansemond, and, for refusing to swear according to their will and against the Command of Christ, was sent up to Jamestown a Prisoner upwards of ten months. Presently After John Blake tooke away my 3 servants And left my wife in a Distressed Condition with A young Child sucking at her Breasts that to help her selfe the Child did hurt Itt selfe with Crying, wch. servants were kept about nine weeks and then returned again by the Governors order. Taken by Distress by Jno. Blake, hed Sheriff of Nansemond County : Two feather bedes and three feather Boalsters and furniture to them with other goodes wch. did amount to 3967 Pounds of Tobbacco, also a servant man that had 3 years to serve. Taken by distress by Thomas Godwin Sherieff: Ten head of Cattells and delivered to Wm. Stinton of James Towne." Robert Jordan has left his own account of his sufferings, which will touch the reader with sympathy for this defender of the American idea that religion and religious contribu- tions are matters for the individual conscience to settle : " Being committed to prison, I was first placed in the debtor's apartment, but in a few days was removed into the common side, where condemned persons are kept, and for some time had not the privilege of seeing anybody, except a negro who once a day brought water to the prisoners ; this place was so dark that I could not see to read even at noon, without creeping to small holes m the door ; being also very noisome, the infectious air 3i8 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. m brought on me the flux, so that, had not the Lord been pleased to sustain me by his invisible hand, I had there lost my life ; the governor was made acquainted with my condition, and I believe used his endeavors for my liberty ; the commissary visited me more than once under a show of friendship, but with a view to ensnare me, and I was very weary of him. I wrote again to the governor, to acquaint him with my situation, and so, after a confinement of three weeks, I was discharged, without any acknowledgment of compliance, and this brought me into an acquaintance and ready admittance to the Governor, who said I was a meek man." ^ " Destraints for priest's visages," as Friends called these forced contributions, lasted in Virginia until the adoption of the Bill of Rights' at the opening of the Revolutionary War. The sixteenth section of this famous Bill, which was drafted by Patrick Henry, embodied this noble principle for which the Quakers had wrought and fought for a hundred years, and for which they suffered imprisonment and annual loss of goods : " Religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force and violence, and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience ; and it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity toward each other." ^ This principle was put into practical effect in October of the same year by the definite enactment that all laws prescribing punishment " for maintaining any opinions in matters of religion, forbearing to repair to Church, or the exercising of any mode of worship whatever" should be repealed, and a universal exemption is made from all levies, taxes, and impositions for the support of the church or its ministers.^ The struggle to secure relief from military exactions was not so soon over, and it was in all the Southern ' Memorials (Philadelphia, 1787) quoted from Weeks, p. 151. ^ Hening, ix. 112. ^ Hening, ix. 164, 312, 387, 496. The Church, however, was not dis- established in Virginia until 1799, though more than two-thirds of the inhabitants of the Colony were dissenters when the Bill of Rights was adopted. cH.n GROUP LIFE AND WORK 319 colonies a prolific source of suffering. In an enactment of the Virginia legislature in the year 1666 it is noted that," divers refractory persons refuse to appeare upon the dayes of exercise [of the militia] and other times when required to attend upon the publique service," and a fine of one hundred pounds of tobacco is imposed for such neglect.^ A minute of Henrico Monthly Meeting under date of 5th July 1729 shows what happened when the fine was not paid, and also what Friends considered was " for the honour of Truth." " Our Friend Tarlton Woodson having related to this Meeting his case of having had a horse wrongfully seazed by the sheriff for a Melishey fine, for not bearing arms according as the Law directs, and desires of this Meeting advice whather he may sew [sue] the sd. auficer for not acting according to Law. This Meeting after deliberate concideration think it may redound more to the honour of Truth to suffer wrong patiently than to take a remedy at Law." By an act of 1738 Friends were exempted from military service, but were required to furnish a substitute, which, for their conscientious ideas, was no relief at all, and the records for the next quarter of a century are full of accounts of distraints for military fines,^ and the period of the French and Indian war was a time of very great suffering on the part of Friends in Virginia as well as everywhere else. Under the law of 1756, providing that every twentieth man should be drafted for the war, seven young Friends were carried to the frontier. They appear to have remained faithful to "the Truth" in their hard trial, and the Virginia Epistle to London in 1757 reports that the young men are now released from imprisonment. ' Hening, ii. 246. ' Minutes of this type can be found in every Record Book : For not bearing arms Thomas Pleasants 500 lbs, tobacco. ,, ,, ,, Ephrim Gartrite 500 ,, ,, M M I. John Crew, for 300 ,, ,, a mare worth .... £6 o o >■ ,, „ John Lead, a bedd and pair of sheets worth . . . . ;^6 o o „ ,, ,, Thomas Ellyson, for 500 lbs. tobacco a man {i.e. slave) worth , . £g o o 320 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. m A law which furnished some relief was passed in 1 766. This exempted Friends from "exercising" at musters, and they were released from the general requirement to provide a set of arms. The militia ofiGcer of each county was required to prepare a list of all male Quakers of a military age, and no person was exempted unless he could prove that he was a bona fide Quaker. In time of actual war, however, the Quaker was still liable to be drafted, though he could furnish a substitute or pay a fine of ten pounds sterling.^ The meeting records show many entries like the following : " At our monthly meeting held at the Western Branch in Isle of Wight County in Virginia the 27th of the 6 month 1757 : " The overseers of each meeting are desired to collect the names of each of their members that are liable by a late act of assembly to be enlisted in the militia against our next monthly meeting, that a list may be given to the Colonel or chief commanding officer of each county as by Act of assembly directed; and have the indulgence granted by the same."^ At the beginning of its colonial history North Carolina possessed a very large measure of religious freedom. In the earliest charter granted by King Charles II. to eight of his favourites in 1663, and extended in 1665, toleration of dissenters was provided for, though it was assumed that the Church of England would be the Church in the Carolinas. The terms offered to the settlers at Cape Fear in 1665 show an unusual breadth of toleration for that century : "No person . . . shall be any ways molested, punished, disquieted, or called in question for any differences in opinion or practice in matters of religious concernment, but every person shall have and enjoy his conscience in matters of religion throughout all the province." ^ 1 Hening, viii. 341. "^ The difficulties on account of military requirements were by no means at an end in 1767. The Friends had much to suffer during the Revolution, and fines for refusal to train in the militia were imposed for many years after the Colony was a state. ' Colony Records of North Carolina, i. 80-81. cH. II GROUP LIFE AND WORK 321 Locke's Fundamental Constitution for the Carolinas provided that any seven persons agreeing in any religion should be constituted " a Church or profession to which they shall give some name to distinguish it from others," and this Fundamental Constitution provided that no person of one faith should disturb or molest the religious assemblies of others, nor persecute them for opinions in religion or for their ways of worship.^ Everything possible was done by the proprietors to invite dissenters to come to the new colony, and Friends were not slow to take advantage of the open door. The Established Church did absolutely nothing in the colony and had no minister there before 1 700. For a quarter of a century Quakerism was the only organised form of Christianity in the colony, and, as Weeks says : " When the eighteenth century dawned, the Quakers, by their thorough organization and by their earnest preaching, by their simple and devoted lives, by their faithfulness and love, had gathered into their fold many men and women who primarily belonged to other denominations. They became Friends and remained faithful to their new-found form of beUef." ^ During this period of freedom, Quakerism had, as the next chapter will show, a large and influential share in shaping the political development of the Colony, and the story of the struggle for freedom from tithes and from bearing arms during the eighteenth century will be told in that chapter. Most of the travelling Friends who visited the Southern colonies in the eighteenth century — and even earlier — felt a strong concern against the ownership of slaves, though it was not until 1760 that this subject really gripped the consciences of the Friends who lived in these colonies.' It seems to us now somewhat amazing that a ' This Fundamental Constitution drawn up by John Locke is printed in the Colony Records of North Carolina, i. pp. 187-207. ^ Religious Development in North Carolina, p. 32. ' A Minute of Maryland Half Year's Meeting of Women Friends for 1678 shows that even at this early period the Quaker women were sensitive in the matter of a true and kindly treatment of the children of the negro race, and that they considered it important to have their own children trained in coiu-tesy toward and reverence for others. The minute is dated June 18, 1678, and reads : "We are informed of a ffriend's Children that belonged to West River Meetting Y 322 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. m man so enlightened and so sensitively conscientious as Wenlock Christison — a man who was ready to die for his faith — could have bought and sold slaves, but such is the fact. He owned a number of white slaves, evidently immigrants sold for debt, but there is also evidence that he bought and owned negroes ; for a minute of Tred- haven Monthly Meeting, under date of September 27, 1 68 1, informs that "one Diggs" has sued the executors of Wenlock Christison, concerning some negroes sent by Wenlock Christison out of Barbadoes to this country," and three years later William Dixon, who married Wenlock Christison's widow, asks the advice of the Monthly Meeting about "selling a negro his freedom." This attitude toward the existence of slavery seems to have gone on pretty much unchanged until the time of the visit of Samuel Fothergill of England (1754) and John Woolman's second visit (1757) — both well-beloved disciples of liberty. Fothergill, who was deeply stirred on the subject, wrote : " The price of blood is upon that province [Maryland] — I mean their purchasing and keeping negroes in slavery." Of North Carolina he writes, " Friends have been a lively people here, but Negro-purchasing comes more and more in use among them." ^ Woolman's first journey through Maryland and Virginia was in 1 746, of which he writes, with his usual sensitiveness : " Two things were remarkable to me in this journey : first, in regard to my entertainment. When I ate, drank, and lodged free-cost with people who lived in ease on the hard labour of their slaves I felt uneasy ; and as my mind was inward toward the' Lord, I found this uneasiness return upon me, at times, through the whole visit. Where the masters bore a good share that they are very badly and Corruptly Educated concerning the importance of strict justice being duly attended to on account of the Affiricans and their Posterity formerly in Slavery, in regard to Christian instruction, Education, and Treatment towards the Youth of that race, as well as the circumstances of those more advanced in years, which it is desired may have place amongst us, and the weight of the subject rests on the mind of friends, now assembled, that when we return to our several Meetings we may be enabled to impress on the minds of our Brethren and Sisters a close consideration of what may be called for at our hands in regard to this People, in consequence of our high profession of Justice and Equity. " ^ Memoirs, pp. 282 and 283. cH.ii GROUP LIFE AND WORK 323 of the burden, and lived frugally, so that their servants were well provided for, and their labour moderate, I felt more easy ; but where they lived in a costly way, and laid heavy burdens on their slaves, my exercise was often great, and I frequently had conversation with them in private concerning it. Secondly, this trade of importing slaves from their native country being much encouraged amongst them, and the white people and their children so generally living without much labour, was frequently the subject of my serious thoughts. I saw in these southern provinces so many vices and corruptions, increased by this trade and this way of life, that it appeared to me as a dark gloominess hanging over the land ; and though now many willingly run into it, yet in future the consequences will be grievous to posterity. I express it as it hath appeared to me, not once, nor twice, but as a matter fixed on my mind." At the time of his visit in 1757 he found himself constrained by his conscience not to accept y^^^ entertain- ment in Friends' homes where there were slaves, and on leaving such homes he put money in the hands of his host, asking him to distribute it among the negroes. He took great pains to make Friends see the evil effects — spiritually, morally, socially, and economically — from slave labour, prophesying, with clear insight, that if Friends "prefer their outward prospects of gain to all other consideration, and do not act conscientiously toward their fellow-creatures, I believe the burden will grow heavier and heavier.^ He urged more care in the education of negroes and greater endeavours to guide them in moral and religious matters, " as souls for whom Christ died," and at Virginia Yearly Meeting he was deeply disturbed in spirit to note that, in adopting the Query of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, " Are there any concerned in the im- portation of negroes, or in buying them after they are imported ? " they had changed it to read : " Are any concerned in the importation of negroes or buying them to trade in ? '' He spoke strongly against this change. He wrote a beautiful epistle to the new Meetings in what he calls " the back settlements of North Carolina " — New Garden and Cane Creek — in which he says : " To rational ' Journal, p. 104. 324 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. m creatures bondage is uneasy, and in tender and most affectionate love I beseech you to keep clear from purchasing any." ^ From this time on there are frequent minutes dealing with the care of slaves, gradually advising against the purchase of them, and finally making it " a disownable offense " to purchase a slave. Maryland Friends at their Yearly Meeting in 1760 had a weighty consideration "of their duty in the matter of holding slaves," and there was " some uneasiness felt about the propriety of buying negroes." The Meeting for that year limited itself to an advice against "importing." The year following (1761), however, it adopted this minute : " At a Yearly Meeting held at West River last Spring relating to Negroes a weighty exercise revived in this Meeting, and a solid conference was held thereon, and wholesome exhortation to attend to the mind of Truth, after which this Meeting con- cludes that Friends should not in any wise encourage their importation by buying or selling those imported, or other slaves, and that those that have them by inheritance or otherwise should be careful to train them up in the principles of the Christian religion." ^ From the time of this awakening the feeling gradually grew among Friends that it was inherently wrong to hold slaves at all. Maryland Yearly Meeting of 1772 adopted a minute " discouraging the iniquitous practice of holding slaves" and advised that Monthly Meetings do extend their care and assistance to those who remain possessed of these people, in brotherly affection and Christian tender- ness, labouring in the ability that may be afforded for their relief" ' The account of this important visit of Woolman through the South occupies chapter iv. of the Journal. ^ There had been an official care shown in North Carolina as early as 1740, when the Yearly Meeting recommends to those holding slaves ' ' to use them as fellow-creatures and not to make too rigorous an exaction of labour from them." Even as early as 1722, Virginia Yearly Meeting asked the Query: "Are all Friends clear of being concerned in the importation of slaves, or purchasing them for sale ? Do they use those well they are possessed of, and do they endeavour to restrain from vice, and to instruct them in the principles of the Christian religion ? " — Weeks, p. 201. CH. 11 GROUP LIFE AND WORK 325 Five years later the Friends of Maryland came to this vigorous conclusion, that : "should any of the members of our Religious Society remain so regardless of the advices of this Meeting from time to time communicated, as to continue to hold mankind in a state of slavery the subscription of such for the use of the Society ought not in future to be received, and in order that Truth's testimony may be clearly maintained against this oppressive practice, our several Quarterly and Monthly Meetings are earnestly enjoined to extend their help and assistance to such in profession with us, as have hitherto neglected to do justice to that oppressed people^ and if any should continue so far to justify their conduct as to refuse or reject the tender advice of their brethren, it is the solid sense and judgment of this Meeting that their continuing in this oppressive practice is become so burdensome, that such persons must be discontinued from our Religious Society." 1 Similar minutes appear in the records of Virginia and North Carolina with a very similar ripening of anti- slavery sentiment. In 1767 Western Branch Monthly Meeting in Virginia took this tentative position : "It is the Judgment of this meeting that no Friends for the future doe purchase any slaves without first applying and have the consent of the Monthly Meeting, except it be for securing of such debts as cannot otherwise be got." Sentiment developed so rapidly that the Yearly Meet- ing of 1768 adopted this conclusion : "The subject of negroes, being brought before the Meeting, and duly and weightily considered, it appears to be the sense of the Meeting, and accordingly is agreed to, that in order to prevent an increase of them in our Society, none of our nwnbers fjT the time to come shall be permitted to purchase a negroe, or any other slave, without being guilty of a breach of our Discipline, and accountable for the same to their Monthly Meeting." This strenuous action produced considerable opposition, and the subject came up again in the Yearly Meeting of 1772, with much the same result : " The sense of this Meeting being requested upon the minute of 1768, prohibiting the purchase of Negroes, whether or not ' Minute of Baltimore Yearly Meeting for 1777. 326 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. m the Monthly Meetings ought to disown such as do purchase [Negroes] which matter having been duly and weightily con- sidered, it is the unanimous sense of this Meeting, that if any professing themselves members of our Society, shall purchase a Negro, or other slave, with no other view but their owti benefit or convenience, and knowing it to be contrary to the rules of our Discipline, the Monthly Meeting to which they belong ought to testify their disunion with such persons, until they condemn their conduct to the satisfaction of the Meeting." ^ One of the most prominent opponents of slave-holding that America produced in the eighteenth century was Warner Mifflin, who was born in Accomack county, Virginia, in 1745. He determined in his youth never to be a slave-holder, but he became possessed of slaves through his wife, Elizabeth Johns, and he also received some from his father. He, however, soon returned to the conviction of his youth, and by the year 1775 he had unconditionally emancipated all the slaves who belonged to him. From that time until his death in 1798 he assiduously laboured to promote emancipation ; but as he had in early life moved into Delaware, the story of his splendid efforts toward freedom does not belong to this chapter.^ In North Carolina a minute was adopted in 1772 advising Friends not to buy negroes except of Friends, or to prevent the separation of husband and wife, or parent and child, or with the approval of the Monthly Meeting, and in 1776 the Yearly Meeting earnestly and affectionately advised Friends to " cleanse their hands of slaves as soon as they -possibly can," and further, " any member of this meeting who may hereafter buy, sell, or clandestinely assign for hire any slave in such manner as may perpetuate or prolong their slavery" was to be disowned.* From the period of the war of the Revolution it was ' Owing to the fact that it was against the law of the Colony to manumit a slave Friends in Virginia found it difficult to free the slaves they owned, and they endeavoured in vain in 1770 to get this law repealed. ^ See Life and Ancestry of Warner Mifflin, compiled by Hilda Justice (Phila., 1905). ^ Weeks, p. 208. cH. II GROUP LIFE AND WORK 327 clearly settled in all the Southern Colonies that no Friend was to buy a slave, and that as fast as possible those negroes owned by members of the Society should be given their freedom and provided for. From this time, too, a feeling of responsibility for the education of the negroes grew upon Friends, and there are many minutes in the Records of the last quarter of the eighteenth century providing for the enlightenment of the coloured people. This chapter has dealt only slightly with the deeper aspect of the religion of these Quakers in the South — the essence and heart of their religion, their personal experience of life with Christ. They did not, during the period we have been studying, produce many great interpreters of the fundamental Quaker idea, they added very little to the prophetic literature of the movement, and they have, therefore, left scant material for the formation of an estimate of their inward power. The voluminous Records of their meetings and the Journals of their visitors, how- ever, leave the impression with the reader that they formed, in their various localities, live centres of an efficient spiritual religion. There was considerable re- iteration of their central doctrine of the inward Light too often presented, perhaps, in rather dull fashion, with too little psychological insight of its meaning and too little of the warm and tender message of the Light revealed in the concrete Person of Galilee and Jerusalem. There was, it is certain, too much of the scribal concern over dress, speech, and "testimonies" grown sacred with age. But there was, nevertheless, something very real and vital in these Quaker groups. They kept alive a true democracy in which all persons were spiritually equal, they exhibited a congregation governing itself and uttering itself through the members themselves, even the simplest. They showed, too, in their meetings for worship an overwhelming sense of the real presence — a hush and awe of spirit before the God of the outer and inner universe. Almost all the Journals of the itinerant ministers inform us that they found in their travels among the 328 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk. m people at large religion at a low ebb, but there was kept alive in these Quaker centres a type of religion which was in some sense quickened with streams from the living Fountain, and which produced real flower and fruit in spiritually ordered lives — what Fothergill calls, "a lively remnant in this land," " purified hearts in which the word of the Lord God grows." ^ They were more sensitive, I think, than their neighbours to the meaning of social evils, and they were more intensely concerned to be in harmony with the will of God. They failed, where so many others have failed, by building little tabernacles over their mounts of vision, by trying to keep for them- selves a Light meant for the race, and by failing to grasp, intelligently, their principle of religion, which became to them a kind of fetish, untranslatable to the world about them ; but they did bless the world by producing here and there, now and then, specimens 'of personal lives, penetrated by the Spirit of Christ, radiant with His Light, taking upon themselves the burdens of the world and living in a busy and material world as though they knew that their main business here was to help to bring in the kingdom of peace and love and brotherhood. In so far as they did that, they succeeded. ' Samuel Fothergill's Memoirs, p. i66. CHAPTER III SOUTHERN QUAKERS IN PUBLIC LIFE Wherever the Quakers, in the early colonial period, found avenues open for political activity they entered them by a sort of natural instinct. There were in this creative stage of Quakerism, no scruples against a political career.' On the contrary, the foremost Friends felt a profound responsibility laid upon them to work out their principles of the Light within, in the fields of political life. Rhode Island and Pennsylvania furnish the most massive illustration of this statement, for these colonies offered the best conditions, but the same tendency appears everywhere where the Quakers were numerous — the tendency to put their ideas into actual operation. In fact, John Archdale, Governor-General of the Carolinas, is one of the most interesting figures in the entire list of public Quakers, and for a brief period this great colony of the Restoration seemed likely to have its career and destiny shaped by Quaker statesmen. Maryland and Virginia presented but slender oppor- tunities for Quaker activity in public life, and the story of political activity in these two colonies is soon told. The early " convincements " in Maryland included a number of public men. William Durand, who was "convinced" by Elizabeth Harris in 1656/7, was a member of Cromwell's commission for the government of Maryland, and was the secretary of that commission.^ He seems soon after — apparently at the Restoration — to have moved to Carolina and to have settled a plantation ^ Archives of Maryland, i. 339, 355. 329 330 QUAKERS IN AMERICAN COLONIES bk.hi on the Roanoke, and the George Durand conspfcuous in early Carolina history was apparently his son.^ Another of Elizabeth Harris's converts was Robert Clarkson, who served his colony for some time in the House of Burgesses as member from Ann Arundel County. Thomas Meares and William Burges were two im- portant public servants of the colony who became Quakers. They frequently appear in the Records of the colony as judicial commissioners, justices of the peace, and members of the Assembly, and in 1657 they both refused to take the oath of office, declaring that it was " not lawful in any case to swear," though they had formerly done so without compunction. These two above named members of the Assembly from Ann Arundel County, and Michael Brookes for Calvert County, were fined, October 6, 1657, for refusing the oath.^ Thomas Meares appears again as a member of the Assembly in 1663, and Michael Brooks also figures in the Records as a member, in spite of the difficulty over the oath, and he was put forward for positions of trust and public service.* Dr. Peter Sharpe is another of the early Quakers in Maryland who was prominent in public life and political activity. He, too, was entrusted by the Assembly, of which he was a member, with important colonial matters.* Thomas Taylor was " convinced " by George Fox's preaching in 1673. He was at the time Speaker of the Lower House and one of the most influential men in public affairs. He went to hear Fox preach at William Cole's house on the Western Shore and was so impressed that he drove seven miles the next day to attend another meeting at Abraham Birkhead's house. Here at a " blessed meeting " the Speaker was " convinced," and he seems to have stayed " convinced," for a little later a meeting was held in his house.^ He continued for many years in legislative ^ See Neill's Virginia Carolorum, p. 306. ^ Archives of Maryland, iii. 358. ' Ibid., i. 359, 362. * Ibid., i. p. 362. Peter Sharpe left in his will, "for perpetual standing a aorse for the use of Friends in the ministry ! " See Davis's Day Star, p. 78. ° Toil's Journal, ii. 182 and 194. CH.III QUAKERS IN PUBLIC LIFE 331 service. His name occurs seventy-one times in the Records of tlie Assembly between 1666 and 1676, and he was also a member of the Governor's Council. William Berry, too, a leader in all the affairs of the new Society, a hospitable entertainer of travelling Friends, a liberal subscriber to the funds of the meeting, was for some years a deputy in the Assembly, beginning his term of service in 1674. He was frequently selected for important committee work, and appears to have enjoyed the trust and confidence of the colonial officials.^ The most interesting Quaker in politics in this colony was, however, the old persecution-tried pioneer of Quaker- ism, Wenlock Christison of Talbot County, who had sat in the shadow of the Boston gallows. He settled in Maryland probably in 1670. In that year Dr. Peter Sharpe transferred a piece of land, containing one hundred and fifty acres — one of the finest sites on the Chesapeake Eastern Shore — to Wenlock Christison " in consideration of true affection and brotherly love," and " also for other divers good causes and considerations." In 1673 another Friend, John Edmondson, also " out of brotherly love," gave him a hundred acres more, adjoining his "Peter Sharpe farm," while a third Friend, Henry Wilcocks, presented him with "a serving-man," named Francis Lloyd.^ He was thus a well-provided citizen. His house was the place of assembly for the Friends' meetings and he was the foremost Quaker minister in the colony.^ His first public service on record was to prepare, with three other Friends, one of them being William Berry, a petition to the Governor, the Council, and the Assembly for the passage of an Act allowing the substitution of an affirmation for an oath. It was an able, straightforward document, and was referred to Lord Baltimore, " who hath formerly had Intentions of Gratifieing the desire of sd ' i