Presented by
The H. H. Mosher Fund

of
New England Yearly Meeting

of the
Religious Society of Friends

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<J5reat

EDITED BY E. HERSHEY SNEATH, Pa.D., LL.D.
YALE UNIVERSITY

THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO DALLAS
ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO

MACMILLAN & CO., LOOTED

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Courtesy of Ferris and Leach

GEORGE FOX

THE
STORY OF GEORGE FOX

BY
RUFUS M. JONES

AUTHOR OF " ST. PAUL THE HERO," " HEBREW HEROES," ETC.

fork

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1919

AU rights reserved

COPYRIGHT, igig
Br THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

Set up and electrotyped. Published September, igtg

EDITOR'S PREFACE

THE "Great Leaders' Lives" aims to meet the
needs of moral and religious secondary education.
Adolescence is pre-eminently the period of Ideal-
ism. The naive obedience to authority character-
istic of childhood is to a large extent supplanted
at this time by self-initiative; by self-determina-
tion in accordance with ideals adopted or framed
by the individual himself. Furthermore, the ideals
of this period are concrete rather than abstract.
They are embodied in individual lives, and, gen-
erally, in lives of action. Hence biographies of
great leaders appeal strongly to the adolescent.
They furnish examples and stimulus for conduct
along the higher lines. The "Great Leaders'
Lives" will include a large number of volumes de-
voted to the study of some of the greatest moral
and spiritual leaders of the race. Although de-
signed primarily for use in the class-room, they
will serve admirably the purposes of a general
course of reading in biography for youth.

E. HERSHEY SNEATH.

INTRODUCTION

ONE of the most interesting periods of all
English History is the period of the Common-
wealth in round numbers, 1640 to 1660. Great
deeds were done then; great persons lived; great
battles were fought; great writers wrote immortal
books; great achievements were made for human
freedom and a great awakening came to men's
souls. Many of the noble figures and leaders of
that age were young men, in the early bloom and
vigor of their lives. It was a time of sunrise and
promise and enthusiasm, and so it makes its peren-
nial appeal of interest to those who are young.
Milton and Cromwell, two of the greatest names
in this famous epoch, are known to all my young
readers, but George Fox, the hero of this story,
is perhaps not so well known. His Journal^ in
which he told his own story, is very long and some
parts of it not easy to read. Much has been written
about him in large historical books and in big
religious treatises, but not much has been written
about his life in the manner and style that appeals
to young people. If I have succeeded in making
his life clear and vivid and real I know that you,

X INTRODUCTION

my young readers, will like him, as I do, and will
feel a warm interest in him.

He was an unusual person, different from others
as a boy, and he remained different from others
in his older years. He had almost no education.
He never learned how to write well; nor could he
spell correctly a thing which most persons in
his time had not learned to do. He lacked the
skill and refinement which a good school might
have given him. But in spite of his peculiarities
and this lack of education he knew and loved
outdoor Nature; he possessed great native gifts;
he read the Bible until he almost knew it by heart;
he had an honest, sincere soul; he was a born
leader of men; he had a most remarkable expe-
rience of God; he was ready to go through fire and
water to perform his duty, and he won the love
of men in an extraordinary way, somewhat as
did St. Francis of Assisi, more than four centuries
earlier.

There are all kinds of heroes, but every hero,
to be a hero, must face danger bravely. He must
forget himself and live greatly for others. He
must win for the race something that has not
been won before. He must act so as to make his
life and deeds an inspiration to those around him
and to those who come after him. On all these
counts I think you will agree with me that George
Fox was a hero. One trouble with us, both young

INTRODUCTION xi

and old, is that we are inclined to take the easy
way of doing what others do, of sliding along the
smooth path that people in general take, of going
with the crowd, and of having little power of
decision, and manly choice of will. It is worth
while to stop now and then and read about one
who could stand out alone and decide for himself
what he believed was right; who had a moral
backbone in his frame and who did not say things
or do things just because that would make him
popular and give him an easy time. The greatest
thing about George Fox, and the most heroic
thing, was his conviction of duty and his obedience
to it. He seemed to hear a voice speaking in his
soul, and when once he felt sure what course that
voice inside pointed out, he took it forthwith,
in spite of all obstacles and in the face of difficulties
and dangers. In this respect he was like a still
greater hero St. Paul, who was "ready" at any
moment to face danger or death and who could
not be turned aside from the path which his soul 's
vision marked out for him. "I am ready," he
told his friends, "not to be bound only, but also
to die at Jerusalem for the cause of the Lord
Jesus." That was George Fox's way, as you will
see, and he, therefore, proved to be a difficult man
to bend or conquer! But it was not in his own
strength that he was strong; it was through what
he calls "the mighty power of God"* "Love the

Xll INTRODUCTION

truth more than all," he used to say, "and go on
in the mighty power of God as good soldiers of
Christ." "Every one who confronted him per-
sonally," Professor William James of Harvard
wrote about Fox, "from Oliver Cromwell down
to magistrates and jailers, seems to have acknowl-
edged his superior power." I hope that this
short book may explain to you how he came to
have this "superior power."

THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX

THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX

CHAPTER I

THE DRAYTON BOY

GEORGE Fox was born in the little hamlet of
Fenny Drayton, which his autobiography, the
"Journal^ calls " Drayton-in-the-clay," on the
western edge of Leicestershire, England, in the
year 1624. Two hundred and seventy-five years
ago, when George was a youth, the country about
Drayton formed a narrow strip of low, undrained,
clay-formed, fen land, with lines of hills running
north and south, both on the east and on the west
of the hamlet. Bosworth-field where Henry of
Richmond plucked the English crown from the
head of Richard III., lies close to Fenny Drayton
and only two or three miles away is the old town
of Nuneaton where "George Eliot" was born.
All the region about Nuneaton is thick with
scenes made memorable in the early stories of this
famous novelist, who was very unlike the George
who was born in nearby Drayton.

The actual house in which George Fox was
born has fallen into ruins and disappeared, though

2 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX

the church where he went every week as a boy
still stands, but little changed in the almost three
centuries that have passed. The solemn yew
trees in the yard in front of the church look very
much as they did when the tiny baby was brought
there to be christened in 1624. The old manor-
house of the Drayton squires, the noted Purefoy
family, is also much the same as when the quiet,
meditative boy watched the aristocratic family,
with their boys and girls, come through their
private door into the little church where he was
sitting.

While we are trying to imagine the Drayton
church, with its Norman doorway, the two aisles
and chancel, and its monuments to the famous
Purefoys, we may as well try to think at the same
time what the sermons were like in those distant
days. While little George was growing up from
childhood to youth England was becoming every
year more strongly Puritan. England had, a
hundred years before, in the time of the Reforma-
tion, broken away from the old historic Roman
Catholic Church and had established its own
English Church, with the King at its head in
place of the Pope. But the new Church was too
much like the old one to suit some of the men and
women of England. There were persons in all
parts of the country who wanted a great many
more changes made. These people wanted to

THE DRAYTON BOY 3

have the Church "purified" so that it would be
more like the Church which they thought Christ
had meant to create in the world. These stout
Puritans not only wanted to change the Church,
they also desired to change the state so that there
would be more freedom and greater liberty for
everybody. It seemed to them that James I.
and still more Charles I., the new Stuart kings who
came from Scotland to the throne after Queen
Elizabeth, were taking away the hard-won rights
and privileges of the English people. When
George Fox was eighteen years old the Puritan
party came into open conflict with the king and
a great civil war was begun on the green fields of
England between the Puritan forces and the
Royalist forces.

Two years before the beginning of the Civil
War (1640) a new minister had come to the Dray-
ton church, to preach to the people of the hamlet.
His name was Nathaniel Stephens. He was thirty-
four years old, a fine scholar from Oxford and a
strong Puritan who knew exactly what he believed.
Like most of the Puritan ministers of the time,
he preached very long sermons and prayed long
prayers. When he began to preach he started an
hourglass running and, when the sand had all
run out, he turned it again and went right on
preaching, without thinking how tired the little
boys' legs were in the hard pews. Like all the

4 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX

other Puritan ministers then, he preached almost
every Sunday about Adam's "fall," and the sin,
guilt and wickedness of all men, women and chil-
dren in the world. He made life seem dark, sad
and hard. He told his hearers in the Drayton
church, over and over again, that God had chosen
some people to be saved and some people to be
lost; that even little children would be lost, if they
were not "elected" to be saved, and then they
would suffer forever and ever in hell with the
wicked fallen angels. "Priest Stephens," as
George Fox always calls him, could talk for hours
at a time of the way of escape from the "City of
Destruction" to the "Celestial City," about
which Bunyan wrote, and everybody learned to
know what he was going to say as they heard him
read his text from the great Bible on his pulpit
desk. George, even while he was still very young,
did not enjoy these sermons. They did not seem
to him to fit what Jesus said in the gospels. He
did not believe that God ever chose anybody to
be lost. He did not think that it was Adam who
made people do wrong; if they sinned it was their
own fault. He could not see that these long
sermons which the Puritan preacher gave them
every Sunday made the people of Fenny Drayton
any better or any more Christlike than they were
before they heard his sad, solemn and tedious talk.
But even if George did not believe all that "Priest

THE DRAYTON BOY 5

Stephens" said in his long hourglass sermons,
and did not enjoy hearing so much about "Adam,"
and "sin," and "elected," and "lost," at least
these sermons set him to thinking, made him a
quiet, solemn boy, and started him off on a new
track, so that in the course of time, as we shall see,
he became a new kind of hero.

The father and mother of George Fox were poor,
humble, hardworking people, but they were brave,
upright and good. The father's name was Chris-
topher, whom the neighbors called "righteous
Christer," because he was absolutely straight
and honest in his dealings. He was a weaver and
worked with his hand loom in the little cottage
where George was born. His mother's name was
Mary Lago, who came of a family that already
had its list of martyrs. She was different from
the other women in Drayton more educated
and more finely cultivated and though her sur-
roundings were hard and mean, and her days were
full of work, she was pure, lovely and noble-
minded, and she knew how to understand, help
and direct her unusual boy. His mother died in
1664 when George Fox was fifty years old. When
the news of her death reached him he went to a
room in the inn where he was staying and sat
alone in the stillness and thought of all her life
had meant to him. As he sat alone with his
sorrow and knew that he could never see his

6 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX

mother again on earth, suddenly he seemed to see
her still alive with God in the eternal world and,
as he says, "everlastingly with me over all." "I
did verily love her as ever one could a mother,"
is his simple, beautiful word about her, "for she
was a good, honest, virtuous, right-natured
woman." As had been the case with Martin
Luther, a hundred and fifty years earlier, here,
again, was just the right kind of home and the
fitting kind of father and mother to produce a new
prophet who could be a leader of men.

George was an odd, strange boy. He did not
play games like other boys. He lived apart and
wandered about alone, shy, grave and thoughtful,
always "wondering." William Penn, who later
knew him better than almost anyone else, says:
"From a child he appeared of another frame of
mind than the rest of his brethren: being more
religious, inward, still, solid and observing beyond
his years." He asked many questions and often
sat alone, thinking and thinking. His great de-
sire, even as a little boy, was to be pure and good,
and he seems to have succeeded, for he says in his
Journal, "When I came to eleven years of age,
I knew pureness and righteousness." The thing
which made him most different from the other
people around him was that he was so unusually
honest about everything he did. He seems to have
got this trait from both his father and his mother.

THE DRAYTON BOY 7

He never could pretend. He would not act as
though he knew unless he really did know. He
would not make believe he had something unless
in very fact he had it. Even as a little boy he
hated sham more than he hated anything else on
earth. He was resolved that if he was going to
live at all he would live a sincere life. We shall
see that whatever else he is doing he is always
trying to be genuine.

While still hardly more than a boy he went to
work for a man who was a shoemaker by trade.
This shoemaker also kept sheep and cattle and
George not only learned to cut out leather and
to sew and peg shoes, but he also tended the sheep,
washed and sheared them and helped sell the wool
in market. His work with the sheep took him out
into the fields and pastures where he was alone
with nature and where he learned to love every-
thing God had made and to feel himself, as he
puts it, "in unity with the creation."

Nature in the fields and hills and sky seemed
to him full of beauty and order; what he could
not understand was why men's lives were not more
beautiful and orderly, as God meant them to be.
He "wondered" over this problem more than over
any thing else. Why, he asked again and again,
are people so light and wanton? What makes
them so hard and unkind to one another and to
God's creatures? Why should they love to do

8 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX

wrong and spoil life which was intended to be
always fair and joyous and beautiful? "Priest
Stephens" kept saying in his sermons that it was
all because Adam sinned and the world was ruined
by the fall. But when the minister told them how
to escape from sin, and how to be saved from it,
why didn't they stop sinning and become pure and
good? They acted as though they supposed that
it was enough just to listen to the sermons, with-
out doing anything more, or without changing
their lives in any way. Religion was, thus, like
having money put away in a bank and never using
it. It seemed to George to be something that you
heard about and talked about in a church, but
not something that made any difference in the
way you lived after you went home from church.
He had an interesting word for that kind of a
religious person. He called him a "professor,"
i. e., one who professes to believe the things which
are preached in church, but who lives in the world
exactly as though he did not believe them.

One day all this about which he had long been
thinking came sweeping over George's sensitive
soul with such a rush that it almost overwhelmed
him. He had gone to a market-fair in a nearby
town and two "professors," one of them being
George's cousin, asked him to go with them to an
inn and drink beer. The two "professors" drank
many mugs of beer and when George refused to

THE DRAYTON BOY

drink with them they tried to make him pay for
what they drank. It shocked the gentle youth
to see two persons who professed to be good Chris-
tians, guzzling beer and acting as though they had
no religion at all, and thereupon he put down a
small piece of money, and walked out of the inn,
and left the "professors" there alone.

When he got home to Drayton he could not
get this scene in the inn out of mind. It seemed
to him only a vivid illustration of the way every-
body was doing. The world seemed twisted and
out of joint. People said one thing and did an-
other. Religion looked like a hollow sham, a
thing for show, not for daily practice. Poor,
honest-hearted, pure-minded George Fox could
not stand the discovery. It crushed his soul and
broke his spirit. He could not sleep. He could
not eat. He moaned and cried and wandered
about alone, trying to understand the strange,
wilderness world he was in. At length he decided
to leave his home it seemed as though God sent
him out and to go up and down the land seek-
ing for light and endeavoring to find some help
for his disturbed soul. He went out into the mys-
terious world not knowing whither he went, but
resolved to see if he could discover anywhere any
real religion which made people's lives right^ and
gave them power to live by.

CHAPTER II

THE YOUTH SEEKING FOR LIGHT

IF George Fox had not been different from other
boys he would very quickly have got over his
strange sorrow on account of other people's shams.
He would not have allowed that to spoil his ap-
petite and disturb his sleep. But he was different
from other boys and he could not get over his sor-
row and depression. The world seemed one great
question-mark to him and he didn't care about
living if he could not find an answer to his myste-
ries. He was nineteen years old when, in 1643, ne
started out on his wanderings. He went to a great
many English towns, and he seems to have tried
in each place to find somebody who could help
him out of his darkness into light. He had heard
that there were people scattered over England,
in out-of-the-way places, who were discovering
new truth about God and man and life and the
Church of Christ, and he hoped that he might
fall in with some person or persons who could set
him on the right track. England was seething
with eagerness and enthusiasm. Religion was
the main business and the great matter. George
Fox was not the only one who was endeavoring

10

THE YOUTH SEEKING FOR LIGHT II

then to find a fresh way of life. It was a seeking
age and all sorts of new ideas were in the air, like
thistle-down in autumn. Drayton was a little
hamlet, and nobody came there with new thoughts
and fresh truth. If George was to discover any-
thing deep enough and great enough to satisfy
his perplexed soul he knew that he must go out
and hunt for it. And hunt he surely did! Every-
body who was serious then was reading the Bible.
Only a little while before this, in 1611, it had been
translated into the wonderful English of the King
James version. There was no other book like it.
It was the most interesting one that had ever been
put into a boy's hand and George, like all other
serious persons then, was reading and rereading it.
Often in his lonely room in some town, where he
knew nobody, he would read and meditate till
the sun went down. Other times he would walk in
the fields, which he loved with a kind of poetic
passion, and sit in hollow trees, or on the sheltered
bank of a brook, and read the book that told him
about God and man's true life.

In his travels in pursuit of truth he went to
London. But it seemed like a great, dark Babylon
to him. He could find everything there but the
one thing he was seeking. The city was full of
interesting sights and wonderful things, but he
could not find there any guide for his soul. He
had an uncle, named Pickering, in London, who

12 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX

was a Baptist, but though the uncle and his Bap-
tist friends were "tender" by which word George
Fox means serious, spiritual, earnest, sincere,
devout George felt that he could not get any
help from them. He found that he could not talk
freely with them about his condition, that they
did not understand his troubles and that he could
not join with them. London had no message of
light for him. John Milton was there and John Pim
was there, two Johns who were "well-beloved
disciples of liberty," and the great Oliver, but
even if he had found them they could not have
helped him in his difficult quest.

He heard that his parents and other relatives
were troubled over his absence from home and so
he came back from London to Fenny Drayton.
Some of his relatives who did not understand him
advised him to take a bride, as the same kind of
people once told St. Francis of Assisi to do, but
George told them he was seeking for wisdom and
not for a wife! Others urged him to become a
soldier and take his part in the civil war, but he
felt that righting with swords would not cure his
soul or remove his load of trouble. At Drayton he
talked much with "Priest Stephens" who some-
times preached on Sunday the things which he
had heard George say during the week, but the
Puritan minister had no message of help for " Right-
eous Christer's" son. He was to George only a

THE YOUTH SEEKING FOR LIGHT 1 3

"professor," and not a "tender" man, nor a real
guide of souls.

He tried many other "priests" in the neighbor-
ing towns, in the hope that they might have more
light than the Drayton minister could give him,
but they proved to be no better than he. One
told him to try tobacco, another advised him to
sing hymns. Some got angry with him and some
made fun of him. But in one thing they were all
alike, they had no light for him; they all seemed to
him "miserable comforters." He walked seven
miles to consult a priest at Tamworth, but he
found him to be like the rest, "a hollow, empty
cask," without anything inside.

His sorrow and depression went so deep into
his soul that it finally broke down his health and
brought him into a dangerous physical and mental
condition. He was a poor forlorn soul in a world
of utter mystery. But it is sometimes darkest
just before dawn, and so it proved to be now in
George's case. Two years he had wandered about
without any relief to his mind. He had found
the ministers in the churches much more "empty"
than he had expected to find them. He discovered
nobody who seemed to be a real prophet and could
speak living words of truth for God. But gradu-
ally, in 1646, he began to realize that God himself
was speaking to him in his own soul. Truths
seemed to flash into his mind, like wavy stream-

14 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX

ers of northern lights. He would suddenly see
a truth as though electric signs were signaled to
him from a central station. It dawned upon him
that God was the same now as when He revealed
messages to prophets in olden times and could still
reveal His will. He saw that temples and churches
were not the most holy places; the soul of man it-
self was the really holy place, for God and man
could meet therein. He saw that any man could
be a priest if he only learned how to hear the voice
of God within his soul and to obey it, and could
tell others how to hear it and understand it. To
do this one would not need to study theology
for years and years in a university; it would only
be necessary that one should be quick and sensi-
tive to hear the divine voice in the soul and be
ready and eager to do what God revealed there.

As these truths flashed into George Fox's in-
ner soul they gave him thrills of joy and relieved
him, while they lasted, of his depression. But he
was not yet sure enough of his new discovery to
believe in it all the time. It would come in happy
moments and then slip away and leave him dis-
couraged again. It was a kind of a seesaw life,
now up in the heights of vision and now down in
the flats of life with no blue sky in sight. The same
old wanderings continued, as though he were on
a new quest for the Holy Grail; the search for
helpers went on and. the restless youth pored over

THE YOUTH SEEKING FOR LIGHT 15

the pages of his Bible, until he knew them almost
or quite by heart. At last, one great and memor-
able day, he discovered something which lasted;
he saw a truth which did not vanish away. He
saw that Jesus Christ who lived in Palestine
centuries ago and helped men out of their sin
and weakness, their sorrow and trouble, was still
alive and unchanged in love and goodness. The
only difference was that then He walked about
in a body like other men and could be in only one
place at one time, now He came as a Spirit within
the soul and could be in all places at once, helping
and healing, comforting and blessing all who needed
Him, just as thousands of people at the same time
can all have the warmth and light of the one sun,

In the stillness of his soul George Fox heard
Christ speaking to him so clearly that he could not
mistake it. "I heard a voice," he wrote in his
Journal^ "which said, 'There is one, even Christ
Jesus that can speak to thy condition* and when
I heard it my heart did leap for joy." He felt
now that he knew Christ in the same way that one
knows a human friend. He had met Him; he had
found Him. It was an experience and not a guess.
The Holy Grail, then, was to be found within,
and not in a distant country. It was as though
he now had a pass key, a master key, which would
open any door where he wanted to enter. He had
discovered something better than men, better than

l6 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX

priests, better than books the living Christ who
could speak and teach and live in his own heart,
just as the light and heat and power of the distant
sun can be present here on the earth, where we
need light and heat and power.

Nobody can correctly understand George Fox
and nobody can properly read the story of his
remarkable life of heroism without hearing first
what happened in his soul. We are so used to
having all our stories tell about things that hap-
pen in the world which we see with our eyes that
it will seem odd to begin with this other kind of
story, of what took place inside where there were
no windows for any one to look in.

Most of our heroes just do things, and we read
about their deeds and are thrilled. Here we have
a hero who cared more about being than about
doing. It seemed to him no use to go out and do
a lot of things if your soul was all wrong and your
life all twisted out of shape. That was just the
kind of sham which he hated most. He wanted
to be so clear and transparent that if men, or even
God, looked through him there would be only fair
and beautiful things to see in the inside part of
himself where he lived.

Something like having God look through him
did happen to George Fox. He thought he heard
God say to him: "My love was always to thee and
thou art in my love," and another time when he

THE YOUTH SEEKING FOR LIGHT IJ

was walking in the fields, which always seemed full
of God, he heard a voice that said, " Thy name is
written in the Lamb's book of life." Nothing
else in the universe seemed so certain to him as
the love of God. He might lose his eyes, as John
Milton had done, and then he would not be able
to see the hills and trees and sky, but he could
not lose his real, inside eyes which saw the in-
finite love of God. He knew there was evil in
the world; that there were pain, sorrow and death;
but greater than all these was the God who still
loved and, in the end, would conquer. He says:
"I saw that there was an ocean of darkness and
death; but an infinite ocean of light and love
flowed over the ocean of darkness. In that I saw
the infinite love of God."

Of course a man who sees a thing like that can
be brave. Nothing on earth can defeat him, or
conquer him. He has the key of his destiny in
his own hand.

CHAPTER III

GATHERING THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHT

AT first, after he had made his great discovery
of the living Christ, George Fox did not yet know
what he should do next. He had made no plan for
his life. In his lonely wanderings he had hoped to
find a people that had real spiritual religion and
he had expected to join with them and live among
them, if he ever found them. But now that, alone
by himself, and without any human teacher to
help him, he had found what he was seeking, the
feeling soon broke in upon his mind that he ought
to go forth into the world and tell everybody,
who would listen, about the light and life of God
in the soul of man.

Before he was well started on his mission, how-
ever, he had two moments of hesitation. One
moment of hesitation came to him as he was walk-
ing through the beautiful Vale of Belvoir (which
he calls the "Vale of Beavor"). In the midst of
the beauty and glory of this valley he began to
"wonder," as so many other persons have done,
whether, after all, everything in the world had
not come by "Nature," by a simple, natural proc-
ess. Is not, perhaps, Nature its own author, its

18

GATHERING THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHT 19

own maker and builder? Do not all things form
and shape themselves from elements that were
always there and that possess the power of chang-
ing into other things? Are not the stars vital sub-
stances which send out seeds of life to the earth,
and even emit these souls of ours that shape for
themselves bodies to live in? If this were so,
then, there might not be any God. All things
just came! This idea got hold of George's thoughts
there in beautiful "Beavor," as he slowly footed
the winding road, and all his mind was clouded
with doubts. There was no mission in the world
for him, if God was not real. He could not preach
about elements! All his high hopes and his new
joy must vanish if the universe was nothing but
natural matter with no inner Soul! He did now
what he always did when he was in trouble, he sat
down in the quiet and stillness, and waited for the
Voice within him to speak. He hushed his argu-
ments, he stopped his "wonderings," and just
listened, like Elijah when the still small voice came
to him. In a few minutes, a living hope arose
within him and a true voice said, 'There is a
living God who made all things,' and Fox adds,
"My cloud vanished away, and life rose over it
all; my heart was glad and I praised the living
God."'

The other moment of hesitation was not be-
cause of doubts which he had, but because the

2O THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX

whole creation seemed to open its meaning and
its secrets to him. It suddenly seemed as though
he could see through everything and understand
it all. "The creation was opened to me," he says.
"All things were new; and all the creation gave
another smell." "I saw the nature and virtues
of things." It was as though he had passed up
through the flaming sword of the Cherubim and
had come into paradise and was like Adam before
he fell, who could talk face to face with God and
could see the natures of all things and give them
their names and knew only purity and peace and
joy. In this moment of rapture Fox wondered
whether he should not go out and practice medi-
cine to heal the wounds and pains and ills of the
world, since "the creation was opened" to him so
that he could discover all the healing virtues of
things! But it soon grew clear to him that his
work in the world was not to doctor men's bodies,
but to help them find God and to cure their souls
and to live pure lives. "The Lord," he says,
"sent me forth to preach His everlasting gospel"
"to declare truth." In "powerful and piercing
words" he began telling little groups of people, who
had passed through experiences something like his
own, about the living Christ who reveals His light
and life and love in the soul of man. He opened
his work of ministry in a very quiet way in the
midland counties of England Leicestershire, War-

GATHERING THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHT 21

wickshire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. One
of his very first followers and disciples was a wo-
man named Elizabeth Hooton who lived at Skegby,
near Mansfield, where a small group of persons
accepted his teaching. Fox himself says that " the
Lord's power wrought mightily and gathered many
of them," and he also says that " the Lord's power
was wonderfully manifested at Mansfield and
other towns thereabouts." Here the people who
gathered around him, and were separated from
the churches, came at first to be called " the Chil-
dren of the Light," though they soon called them-
selves "Friends."

Fox's preaching in these early days was very
simple and quite different from that in the Puritan
churches. He asked people to stop arguing about
Christ and turn their attention to the light of
Christ in their own souls, to sit still and listen and
to let God's grace and power work within them.
Above everything else he told all his hearers that
they must get all shams out of their lives. They
must be what they professed to be and they must
carry out all the truth which they discovered into
action in daily life. They must stop being in-
sincere. When they said anything they must
mean it.

Fox himself gave up observing all fashions
and manners, customs and conventions which he
thought had become hollow, empty and meaning-

i

22 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX

less. He resolved that he would not do anything
for mere show. "When the Lord sent me forth
into the world," he wrote in his Journal, "He
forbade me to put off my hat to any, high or low;
and I was required to say Thee and Thou to all
men and women, without any respect to rich or
poor, great or small." He made a great point of
treating everybody alike, of showing as much
respect to a poor person that labored with his
hands as to the wealthiest person who had every-
thing done for him. He maintained that in the
sight of God all were alike and all were precious.
He wanted to spread in the world a religion and a
way of life which would give everyone every-
where a full chance to be the kind of person God
in the creation meant him to be. He hoped, too,
to change all hard customs, unfair laws and un-
just systems which kept men bound and cramped
and to help bring in a condition of things more
like the Kingdom of God which Christ talked
about.

George Fox quickly found out how difficult it
is to change the world and how much suffering it
costs to live differently and to act differently from
the way people in general live and act. He never
stopped to consider the easy way. He challenged
what seemed to him wrong regardless of what
might happen. He got his first taste of the kind
of suffering that was to come to him all the rest

GATHERING THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHT 2J

of his life in the town of Nottingham, one Sunday
morning in 1649. He was walking along the high
road, when from a hill-top he saw the spire of
St. Mary's church. He could not bear the sight
of church-spires. They seemed to him unneces-
sary, useless and made for show. He had formed a
great dislike of the Church as it was in his day, of
the preaching which people had to listen to in
the churches, and especially of the ministers who
were, he thought, hollow and empty. When he
saw a spire it aroused all his deep feelings of dis-
like. The church-spire seemed to him to be the
focus of the entire system which he disapproved.
He had not yet quite learned to control himself and
to see there was something true even in things
which he disliked. As he caught sight of this
Nottingham spire something powerfully moved
him to go and "cry out against" what was going
on in that church. When he got there he thought
that the minister looked dull and stupid "like a
lump of earth." So he himself began to tell the
people in the church that God was ready to speak
in their own souls; that if they would listen to Him
and obey His voice the full day of life and glory
would dawn in their own hearts and the day-star
would arise in their souls and they would be able to
understand God's living Word and serve Him
without the help of priest and without long and
tedious sermons.
>

^4 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX

Quite naturally the minister did not like the
interruption of his service, though the people who
heard the stranger's words were amazed and could
not for a long time "get them out of their ears."
But while Fox was still speaking, some officers
came up behind and seized him and put him in a
nasty, foul-smelling prison. The head sheriff,
named John Reckless, who had charge of him, was
convinced of the truth which Fox preached about
God and he and his entire family were changed
and became "Children of the Light," and many
others became "tender" when they felt the power
of God break forth through his life and his words.
A man whose soul had been touched came and
offered to take George Fox's place in the prison
and to suffer instead of him, if the judges would
let Fox go. He was soon released from his first
imprisonment without any substitute and allowed
to go on his way in freedom.

This experience in Nottingham had not made
him any more careful or cautious. He was just
as ready as before to cry out against things which
he believed to be wrong or a sham. Coming into
Mansfield-Woodhouse, where he calmed "a dis-
tracted woman" who was "mended by the Lord's
power" and became one of the "Children of the
Light," Fox was "moved to go to the steeple-
house," as he always called the church building,
and "declare truth there." The people in this

GATHERING THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHT 25

church did not wait for the officers. In Fox's own
account of the affair, he says: "The people fell
upon me in great rage, struck me down and al-
most stifled and smothered me; and I was cruelly
beaten and bruised by them with their hands,
Bibles and sticks. Then they haled me out, though
I was hardly able to stand, and put me into the
stocks; and they brought dog-whips and horse-
whips, threatening to whip me." Finally, he says,
"the rude people stoned me out of the town for
preaching the word of life to them," "but the
Lord's power soon healed me again. That day
some people were convinced of the Lord's truth
and turned to His teaching."

At every town where he came in his travels
some people were "convinced" and the more he
was attacked and beaten the more people believed
in his truth. In Market-Bosworth he was stoned
out of the town, but some people were "loving"
and others were "confirmed." An incident oc-
curred at Twy-Cross which shows the heroic stuff
and fiber of Fox's spirit. While he was visiting " a
great man of the town," who was lying dangerously
ill and needed spiritual help, a serving-man in the
house came running out of a room with a naked
rapier in his hand and, in a wild, mad way, threat-
ened to thrust it into Fox's side. George says in
his Journal: "I looked steadfastly on him and
said, 'Alack for thee, poor creature! what wilt

26 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX

thou do with thy carnal weapon; it is no more to
me than a straw/'

At length in his journeyings he came to Derby
where he was to spend a whole year in prison for
"declaring truth." It all came from his bold and
unrestrained method of "crying out against" the
things which "struck at his life." He went to
the Derby "steeple-house" on "a great lecture
day," when distinguished vistors were preaching
there, and after they had finished, Fox rose and
gave them his message, which he believed was from
the Lord. They at once arrested him and brought
him before the magistrates, where he spoke with
unusual boldness of the living Christ and of the
triumphant life when Christ lives in an obedient
man. It seemed to the magistrates too bold.
They called it "blasphemy," against which there
was a law, and they committed George Fox to the
Derby jail for six months.

While he was in the jail Fox had many visitors
who came to ask him for help, or to discuss reli-
gious questions with him. He wrote a great many
papers and letters, explaining to the world his
teachings and his practices and his desire for a
better world. The keeper of the jail, who at first
was very hard against him, became completely
changed and very " tender." One evening George
overheard the jailer say to his wife: "Wife, I
have seen the day of judgment, and I saw George

GATHERING THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHT 2J

there, and I was afraid of him, because I had done
him so much wrong, and spoken so much against
him to the ministers and professors, and to the
justices and in taverns and ale-houses." A little
later he came into Fox's room and said to him:
"I have been as a lion against you; but now I
come like a lamb, and like the jailer that came
to Paul and Silas trembling." He asked if he
might come and live in the room with Fox, and
so it was arranged for the strange prisoner and
his jailer to live together in the jail!

The judges, too, were much impressed with the
character and spirit of the prisoner. They tried
to contrive some plan to set him free and to get
him out of the jail, though they did not like to say
that they were sorry for having put him in. They
told him that he might have liberty to walk a
mile in any direction he pleased, but George de-
clined to take any walks until they had measured
off an exact mile. When he did walk out on his
mile trips, he went into the streets and market of
Derby and "warned the people to repent of
wickedness."

It was here in Derby that the "Children of the
Light" were first called "Quakers." One day in
1650 when George Fox was in the Court and Justice
Bennett, a distinguished judge, was questioning
him, Fox declared that the time had come for men
to quake and tremble before the Lord, and the

28 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX

Judge used words something like this, "So you
are Quakers' are you?" and the name stuck and
soon came into general use.

When the six months of the sentence were
nearly expired some army commissioners came to
the jail and tried to get George Fox to join the
army of the Commonwealth and they promised
to make him a captain. He told the commissioners
that he was against all wars and could not fight
with arms against anybody. He said that he was
living "in the virtue of that life and power that
takes away the occasion for all wars." What he
said to the commissioners so offended them that
their "rage got up," and they ordered the jailer
to put him into the "dungeon among the rogues
and felons." "So I was had away," the Journal
says, "and put into a lousy, stinking place, with-
out any bed, amongst thirty felons, where I was
kept almost half a year."

He was deeply affected by the evil condition
of the prisoners in the dungeon and he wrote
letters to the justices, showing them how hurtful
it was to keep men in jails where they learned
wickedness and became brutalized and much worse
than they were before. He pleaded for a change
in the laws which put men to death for small
crimes and petty offenses. His tender heart was
especially touched by the case of one poor woman
in the jail who was to be executed for stealing.

GATHERING THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHT 29

She was finally saved from the gallows and "be-
came convinced of God's everlasting truth"
that is, she became one of "the Children of the
Light."

One day a "conjuror" who was in the jail
frightened everybody, even the jailer himself, by
threatening to raise the Devil and break down the
house. It was an age when almost everybody
believed in the power of witchcraft. Fox was not
so easily scared. He says: "I was moved of the
Lord to go in His power and rebuke him and say
unto him: 'Come let us see what thou canst do;
do thy worst!' I told him the Devil was raised
high enough in him already, but the power of
God chained him down: so he slunk away from
me."

George's relatives had tried in vain to get him
out of the jail, for he would not budge until the
magistrates who put him in were ready of their
own accord to come and take him out. That is
what they finally decided to do. In the winter
of 1651, after having passed six months in the
common jail and six more months -in the felon's
dungeon, the magistrates opened his prison door
and set him at liberty.

CHAPTER IV

A GREAT PEOPLE TO BE GATHERED

IT will already have been discovered that George
Fox was an unusual person. He was, as William
Penn once said, "an original" and "no man's
copy." It was impossible to foretell what he
would do, for he did not take to the old ruts of
custom or the formed grooves of habit. He cut
out an unused path and marked a new course.
And, in doing it, he never stopped to count the
cost or to consider the abuse it might bring. He
went forward and acted. Sometimes he made
mistakes and took a false start and had to learn
through bitter experience where the right road
really was, but he was always trying to follow a
divine light, and everybody could be sure that he
was sincere, honest and brave.

He was a striking, impressive man to look at.
There was a certain majesty about his presence,
his friend William Penn tells us. His eyes pos-
sessed an extraordinary power and seemed to
look right through a person. "Take thy eyes off
me; they pierce me!" one man cried out as Fox
steadily gazed at him. Ministers were often
afraid to face him. When Francis Howgill saw

30

A GREAT PEOPLE TO BE GATHERED 3!

Fox look in on him through the door of Firbank
Chapel as Howgill was trying to preach, he was
so embarrassed that, he says, any one could have
killed him with a crab apple! Again and again
fierce opponents wilted down in debate when they
saw this calm, serene man in front of them. The
Cambridge students endeavored to pull him off
his horse when Fox came to their University town
with his message, but they could not unhorse
him. "I kept on my horse's back," he says,
"and rid through them in the Lord's power. Oh!
said they, he shines: he glisters." After he had
spoken in Beverley Minster, a great lady of Bev-
erley told Justice Hotham of that town that
"an Angel or Spirit came into the church at Bev-
erley and spoke the wonderful things of God, to
the astonishment of all that were there: and when
it had done, /'/ passed away, and they did not know
whence it came or whither /'/ went; but // aston-
ished all, priests, professors and magistrates."

He wore leather breeches and a leather doublet,
not in order to be odd and queer, but because
these were the best and most durable clothes for
one who traveled in all weathers and had to sleep
often under hedges and haystacks and needed
garments that were both stout and warm. His
clothes were fastened with "alchemy buttons,"
that is, buttons made of composition metal, and
he was very particular to have good, clean linen.

32 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX

His hair was thick and long, with a strong tend-
ency to curl at the ends. He wore his hat under
all circumstances. He could endure fatigue, labor,
travel, beatings, lack of food, cold, wet, and bar-
baric prisons. His friends loved him, as William
Penn says, "with an unfeigned and unfading love."
A Yorkshire "priest" explained why people fol-
lowed the new preacher and seemed so attached
to him by inventing the story that Fox carried
magic bottles with him and made people drink
out of them, and that was the reason why he had
so many followers and friends!

Soon after he was out of Derby prison he wid-
ened out his field of labor and entered the great
county of Yorkshire where he found some of the
most intimate friends of his life and some of the
ablest helpers in his work. On the first arrival in
Yorkshire he did not meet with much kindness
nor with any success. The first inn at which he
stayed had no welcome for the "man in leather
breeches." "I bid the woman of the house,"
he says in the Journal^ " if she had any meat, to
bring me some; but because I said Thee and Thou
to her she looked strangely on me. Then I asked
her if she had any milk; and she said, { No.* I was
sensible she spoke falsely, and being willing to
try her further, I asked her if she had any cream;
she denied that she had any. Now there stood a
churn in the room, and a little boy playing about

A GREAT PEOPLE TO BE GATHERED 33

it put his hands into it and pulled it down, and
threw all the cream on the floor before my eyes.
Thus was the woman manifested to be a liar. She
was amazed and blessed herself, and taking up the
child whipped it sorely; but I reproved her for her
lying and deceit. After the Lord had thus dis-
covered her deceit and perverseness, I walked out
of the house, and went away until I came to a
stack of hay and lay in the haystack that night
in rain and snow [of course without any supper]
it being three days before the time called Christ-
mas."

The next day he tried to give his message in the
great Minster at York where the people did not
take him for an angel, as the great lady had done
in Beverley. As soon as the words of his brief and
practical message were out of his mouth, he says,
"they hurried me out and threw me down the
steps, but I got up again without hurt and went
to my lodgings."

The first important successes which came to
him in Yorkshire were in the country about Don-
caster which is not far from Scrooby, where the
"Pilgrim Fathers," with their great minister,
John Robinson, had lived before they went to
Holland and later to Massachusetts. In this
region there were many persons who were seeking
for fresh light, which Robinson had said was about
to "break forth," and who were prepared in ad-

34 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX

vance for the new preacher. They were all ready
to become "Children of the Light" as soon as Fox
appeared. The most important members of this
group were Richard Farnsworth who became one
of the leading Quakers; Thomas Aldam and his
wife Mary; John and Thomas Killam and their
wives Margaret and Joan. A little later two more
men joined him who were to be among the most
famous of all his fellow-workers, and one of them,
by his sad mistakes, was to bring great trouble
upon the Quaker movement. They were William
Dewsbury and James Nayler, both of them former
soldiers in the armies of the Civil War. Dews-
bury was one of "the sweetest and wisest" of all
the early Friends, who knew how to turn his
prisons into palaces and the bolts and bars of his
dungeon into jewels. Nayler was one of the ablest
and most moving of all the Quaker preachers,
and once his preaching gave one of Cromwell's
officers more terror than did the battle of Dunbar.
He reached great heights, he had a terrible fall and
finally he finished his life with a marvelous re-
pentance.

At Warmsworth, on this early Yorkshire visit,
Fox says, "the people ran upon me and knocked
me sorely with their staves, threw clods and stones
at me and abused me much; the priest also, being
in a great rage, laid violent hands on me himself.
But I warned them and him of the terrible day of

A GREAT PEOPLE TO BE GATHERED 35

the Lord, and exhorted them to repent and turn
to Christ. Being filled with the Lord's refreshing
power, I was not sensible of much hurt I had re-
ceived by their blows." At Tickhill he was treated
still worse. As soon as he began to speak in the
"steeple-house" the people fell upon him fiercely.
The 'Journal says: "The clerk took up his Bible,
as I was speaking and struck me on the face with
it, so that it gushed out with blood, and I bled
exceedingly in the steeple-house. Then the people
cried, 'Let us have him out of the Church,' and
when they had got me out, they beat me exceed-
ingly and threw me down, and over a hedge; and
afterwards they dragged me through a house into
the street, stoning and beating me as they drew
me along, so that I was besmeared all over with
blood and dirt." In the struggle he lost his pre-
cious hat, which he wore on all occasions and took
off in the presence of nobody and in no building,
and he had to walk eight miles to Balby without
any hat!

In a town near Pickering, where there was more
preaching than practice in the church, and where
many people came together in large numbers to
hear the preacher in leather breeches, Fox sat
for some hours in absolute silence on a haystack,
with the people gathered around him waiting for
him to speak. He felt moved "to famish them
from words" They kept asking him when he was

36 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX

going to begin. He quietly said each time they
asked, "Wait." "At last," he says, " I was moved
of the Lord to speak; and they were struck by the
Lord's power; the word of life reached to them,
and there was a general convincement amongst
them."

Thus he went on through the towns of York-
shire, sleeping almost entirely out of doors, so
that a rumor got afloat that he never used a bed;
meeting often furious persecution, and, on the
other hand, gaining bands of followers so devoted
that they seemed to his enemies under the spell
of some magic charm. In spite of the bitter op-
position he was steadily gaining ground and the
truth was spreading. He says that the Lord told
him, in these early Yorkshire days, that "if but
one man or woman were raised up by God's power,
to stand and live in the same spirit that the
prophets, and apostles were in, who gave forth
the Scriptures, that man or woman should shake
all the country in their profession for ten miles
around!" which means, I suppose, that a person
who has real, firsthand religious life and power
will make everybody in a ten-mile radius see how
different that is from a religion of mere empty pro-
fession.

At length in his travels, with Richard Farns-
worth as his companion, George Fox came to
Pendle-Hill, just across the border of Yorkshire,

A GREAT PEOPLE TO BE GATHERED 37

in the edge of Lancashire. He calls it "a very
great hill" "very steep and high," with a wide
sweep of view, all the way to " the sea bordering
upon Lancashire." The Lord moved him, he
says, to climb this Pendle-Hill. And on the lonely
top of it, with the great stretch of the beautiful
world below him, he had an inspiration and a
vision: "From the top of the hill, the Lord let
me see in what places He had a great people to be
gathered"

He had been proclaiming his message in the
counties of England now for about four years,
and though he had seen some striking results from
his labors, the successes were on the whole slender
and meager. There was little sign yet that a new
religious reformation was under way or that a
powerful religious Society was to be born out of
the movement of which Fox was the leader. There
were many little temporary sects forming in Eng-
land at this time and people supposed that "the
Children of the Light" was to be just one more of
them. They believed that it would soon go by
and vanish away. And probably it would have
done so if Fox, there in the region around Pendle-
Hill, had not discovered "a great people to be
gathered." This was a turning point in his life
and this was the great epoch in his ministry. He
had hardly eaten anything or drunk anything for
several days. At a spring on the side of Pendle-

38 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX

Hill he now refreshed himself. That night he came
to an inn and we hope that, after his long fast,
he had a good supper. But, whether he had supper
or not, at the inn he had a new vision, or, at least,
a continuation of the vision which he had on
Pendle-Hill. "Here," he says, "the Lord opened
unto me, and let me see a great people in white
raiment by a river side, coming to the Lord; and
the place I saw them in was about Wensleydale
and Sedbergh." The river of his vision, where the
people in white raiment were to be gathered, was
the river Rawthey, which flows through the dales
near Sedbergh, or Brigflatts. In this district
there were large communities of people called
"Seekers." They had separated from the Church,
somewhat as the "Pilgrim Fathers" at Scrooby
did, and they had formed a new kind of religious
meeting. It seemed to them that none of the
churches in the world were like the Church of
Christ in the days of the apostles, as it is described
in the New Testament, and these "Seekers"
wanted to bring back and restore that apostolic
Church in its purity. They thought, however,
that this could not be done until some new prophet
or apostle should be sent by Christ, commissioned
to set up the new Church and to bring in the new
era. While they were waiting for the prophet of
the Lord to come, they were waiters, or seekers
for the Light. They often held their meetings

A GREAT PEOPLE TO BE GATHERED 39

in silence for they did not want to speak unless they
were sure God Himself gave them something to
say. They had ministers in their communities
but they did not think that any minister who had
yet appeared had full authority and power as the
apostles had. They were "waiting" in hope for
an apostolic man to come to them. They were all
ready to believe in him and to receive him as soon
as they were convinced that he had come. George
Fox, when he appeared among them, seemed to
them to be the man they were waiting for, and
they were quickly "gathered in," as we shall see.

CHAPTER V

THE NEW GROUP OF FRIENDS IN THE NORTH

As we have already seen, "the people in white
raiment" which is only another way of saying
the people who were called to be "saints" were
the groups of "seekers" more or less gathered in
little communities, in the fringe of border towns
where the three counties of Yorkshire, Lancashire
and Westmoreland join. Sedbergh was the im-
portant center in Yorkshire; Yealand and Kellet
in Lancashire; Kendal, Underbarrow and Gray-
rigg in Westmoreland, while Firbank chapel at
Preston-Patrick, not far from Kendal, was their
central meeting place for their General Meeting,
held once a month. As soon as they heard Fox
speak -his message, they felt that he "spoke with
authority" and was a different type of preacher
from any they had ever heard.

The first great occasion when the "Seekers" in
a body heard Fox speak was the Sunday afternoon
following his "vision" on Pendle-Hill. It was the
time of their General Monthly Meeting at Preston-
Patrick. Francis Howgill and John Audland, two
of their foremost men, had spoken in Firbank
chapel in the morning and Fox had looked in at

40

THE NEW GROUP OF FRIENDS IN THE NORTH 4!

the door while Howgill was speaking, but he did
not go into the chapel. He waited outside and
at the close of the morning meeting he asked the
throng of people to come to an afternoon meeting
on the hillside. A mass of rock rises out of the
fell which makes a natural pulpit, with a broad
area in front admirably suited for a large group
of listeners. Here in the afternoon a thousand
people gathered around the rock on which Fox
sat. At first there was a period of deep, intense
silence and then the strange, new, prophet-like
preacher rose and spoke for three hours! He told
them in powerful, piercing words how different the
Church in the apostles' days was from the Church
in their time and he declared that Christ wanted
to restore this true, living, powerful, spiritual
Church. He announced, as he always did, that
Christ Himself was still living, though invisible,
and would be the Teacher of all who were willing
and eager to hear His voice. The living Christ
would feed them and guide them and reveal the
truth to them and make their bodies real Temples
of God. He made them see that they need no
longer be "waiters" and "seekers," for the time
had fully come when they could be finders and
possessors. The Light of Christ, he told them,
reaches every soul and the real presence of Christ
spreads over every human heart. As they listened,
with rapt faces, they felt the demonstration and

42 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX

power of his message. It reached their hearts and
they were convinced of its truth. It seemed clear
that the person possessed of true apostolic power,
for whom they had been waiting, was now among
them, speaking to them. Many hundreds were
convinced and all those who had been " teachers "
in the Seekers' communities accepted the message
of Fox and joined themselves to his movement.
Many more meetings were held among the Seekers
and many families were visited, until practically
all who had formed the groups of Seekers now
became "Children of the Light" and helped to
form what now came to be called the Society of
Friends.

From these new bands came the most important
of the early Quaker preachers and leaders. We
have already met Francis Howgill and John Aud-
land who were "teachers" in the meeting at Fir-
bank chapel. Howgill was a little older and
Audland a little younger than Fox. They soon
caught the same spirit and became powerful
bearers of the message about the living Christ in
man's soul. No less remarkable were two other
publishers of the Quaker truth who came to help
Fox at this time Edward Burrough and John
Camm. Burrough was only nineteen and his life-
work was to be brief, but his whole strength was
" bended after God," and prisons could not daunt
him nor death affright him. He was a great in-

THE NEW GROUP OF FRIENDS IN THE NORTH 43

strument in the spreading of the Quaker message.
Camm was already fifty and was one of the few
Quaker messengers of this early time who were not
in the first flush of youth and vigor. His soul
had "hungered and thirsted for truth," and now
that he felt sure of having found it, he devoted
himself through suffering and sacrifice, to the
spreading of it. There were many besides these
four full-statured preachers who possessed large
gifts and who became powerful ministers with Fox
in the publishing of the Quaker teaching of the
Light. The most noted of them were Richard
Hubberthorne, Miles Halhead, Miles Hubbersty,
Robert Widders, Gervase Benson, Thomas Tay-
lor, Ann Camm, Dorothy Waugh and Elizabeth
Fletcher. They were devoted to their new leader,
George Fox; they were, like him, ready to leave
all, houses and lands, father and mother, friends
and neighbors, to go out into "the hard and briery
world" with their gospel of joy, to suffer or to die
for their truth, and like "the little brothers" who
gathered around St Francis of Assisi, they felt
that through their new leader, they had found
Christ and His joy. William Caton, who joined
the band from the Swarthmore group, of which
we shall soon hear, expressed the joy and thrill
which they all felt. He says: "Oh, the love which
in that day abounded in us, ... and oh, the
freshness of the power of the Lord God which was

44 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX

amongst us, and the zeal for God and His truth,
the comfort and refreshment which we had from
His presence, the nearness and dearness that was
amongst us one towards another." In a very
short time there were no less than sixty persons
who, thrilled with new life and power, were going
about, as George Fox was doing, to preach and
proclaim the Light and Life and Love of God
revealed to men.

But there was a still more important person in
this beautiful Lake District of Westmoreland who
was waiting unconsciously, like the Seekers, for
Fox's vital message. This was Margaret Fell of
Swarthmore Hall who was one day to become
Margaret Fox. Her maiden name was Askew and
she came of the wealthy family at Marsh Grange
in the Furness District. Some historians have
thought that she was a descendant of the noble
martyr, Anne Askew, but that is not likely. She
must live by her own fame and not by that of a
martyred ancestor. In 1658, when Margaret was
about eighteen, she had married Thomas Fell, the
proprietor of Swarthmore Hall, a fine old Eliza-
bethan manor house, near the town of Ulverston.
He was sixteen years older than his lovely wife,
and before the arrival of Fox he had become one
of the leading men in the northern counties of
England. He had been a member of the Long
Parliament, and he was now a prominent judge and

THE NEW GROUP OF FRIENDS IN THE NORTH 45

the holder of other honorable and distinguished
positions. His work as judge took him often away
from home and his capable wife had become effi-
cient in the management of the affairs of the Hall
and of the large estate. Nine children, all but
one of whom were still living, seven of them daugh-
ters, had been born in Swarthmore Hall during
the happy years of their married life.

Margaret Fell was a devoutly religious woman.
She was a diligent attender of the Ulverston church,
where "priest Lampitt" ministered, but she was
not wholly satisfied with the religion of the
churches and longed for a more real and intimate
experience of God. She felt and thought in the
secret of her heart much as " the people in white
raiment" did, though she had never joined the
Seeker communities. The Hall was always hos-
pitably open to religious people and the mistress
of it welcomed all traveling ministers who came
that way. It was, therefore, not an unusual cir-
cumstance when a friend of the Fells brought
"the man in leather breeches" to spend the night
in Swarthmore Hall. Judge Fell was absent on
his circuit and his wife, too, was away from home
when Fox arrived, but Lampitt, the Ulverston
minister, came to the Hall on the afternoon of
his arrival and had a long talk and discussion with
him. Fox at once took a positive dislike to Lam-
pitt, for he had a clear sense that the Ulverston

46 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX

minister was impure in his life and insincere, preach-
ing lofty things to others but living himself in sin,
and when Margaret Fell returned in the evening
she found that her guest, whose name she had
only recently heard, had had a vigorous discussion
and a sharp disagreement with her minister.

The next day was "lecture day" in the Ulverston
church and Fox was invited to hear "priest Lam-
pitt" preach, but he chose instead to "walk in
the fields," where he always seems to have felt
especially near to God. He had not walked long
in the fields, however, before "the word of the
Lord came to him" to go to the church. They
were singing a hymn as he came in, and, when the
hymn was finished, Fox asked permission to speak.
As Margaret Fell has given a vivid account of
what happened in the church we will let her tell
it: "When they had done singing, he stood up
upon a seat or form, and desired that he might
have liberty to speak, and he that was in the
pulpit said he might. And the first words that
he spoke were as followeth, 'He is not a Jew that
is one outward, neither is that circumcision, which
is outward; but he is a Jew that is one inward, and
that is circumcision, which is of the heart.' And
so he went on, and said how that Christ was the
Light of the world, and lighteth every man that
cometh into the world, and that by this Light they
might be gathered to God. And I stood up in my

THE NEW GROUP OF FRIENDS IN THE NORTH 47

pew, and I wondered at his doctrine, for I had never
heard such before. And then he went on and
opened up the Scriptures, and said that the Scrip-
tures were the prophets' words and Christ's and
the apostles' words; what they spoke they en-
joyed and possessed and had it from the Lord.
And [he] said, 'Then what had any to do with the
Scriptures, but as they came to the Spirit that
gave them forth? You will say, Christ saith this,
and the apostles say this, but what canst thou say?
Art thou a Child of the Light, and hast thou
walked in the Light, and what thou speakest is it
inwardly from the Lord ? This opened me so, that
it cut me to the heart, and then I saw clearly
that we were all wrong. So I sat down in my pew
again, and cried bitterly: and I cried in my spirit
to the Lord, ' We are all thieves, we are all thieves,
we have taken the Scriptures in words and know
nothing of them in ourselves.

As Fox went on to describe the present condition
of the Church and was pointing out how different
it was from the Church in the days of the apostles,
a justice of the peace, named John Sawrey, a
staunch Puritan, whom Margaret Fell calls a
"professor," interrupted him and told the church-
warden to take him out of the church. The church-
warden was trying to perform his disagreeable
task when suddenly Margaret Fell rose up again
in her pew and called out in a tone of authority,

48 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX

"Let him alone, why may not he speak as well as
any other?" Whereupon the churchwarden let
Fox alone and Mistress Fell took him back to
Swarthmore Hall in peace. That night he spoke
with penetrating power to the family and servants
in the Hall and they were convinced that what he
said was true. Fox visited many neighboring
places, everywhere gathering more followers. In
the meantime James Nayler and Richard Farns-
worth had come to Westmoreland to join him and
they, too, helped to establish the Swarthmore
Hall group in their new-found faith. The ministers
of the surrounding churches and the men of the
strong Puritan stamp like Justice Sawrey were
much aroused at the progress which George Fox
was making in their district and they resolved to
set powerful Judge Fell against him. A large
party of them, with captains and magistrates,
went to meet the judge as he was returning from
his circuit, three weeks after the arrival of Fox,
and poured their tale of woe into his ears: "A
fanatic, ranting preacher in leather breeches,
named George Fox, had come to Swarthmore Hall
and had bewitched his wife, and had bewitched
his entire household. This vagrant preacher had
taken away their religion and had turned them
into mad Quakers. He was destroying the churches
and spreading his wild ideas in every direction
and he and his Quakers must be thrust out of the

THE NEW GROUP OF FRIENDS IN THE NORTH 49

district, or clapt into a dungeon at once or there
would be a complete havoc of everything they
loved in the country." Judge Fell was a man of
strong nature and powerful will, and, as he heard
this story of bewitchment, his wrath was kindled
and he came riding to his greatly altered home in
profound grief and anger. Nobody could foresee
what would happen next.

CHAPTER VI

THE BEGINNING OF A NEW ERA

ANGRY as he was at what was taking place in
his home, Judge Fell was nevertheless a calm and
sensible man. He knew and trusted his wife.
He would not condemn her until he had heard her
story. He was "greatly offended," but he did not
lose his head. As Margaret Fell says, "he be-
haved moderately and wisely." She herself was
in a desperate strait, for she felt sure that she must
either displease her husband or disobey God and
the truth. The judge was stern and quiet, and
everybody could see in his hard and silent face
that he did not like what had happened in his
absence. James Nayler and Richard Farnsworth
were in the Hall at the time and Mistress Fell
asked them during the afternoon to come in and
explain to her husband why they had come and
what their religious faith was. Like the real man
he was, Judge Fell listened quietly to them and
seemed to understand their spirit. George Fox
was expected that evening and everything would
depend on the impression which he would make
upon the judge. At evening dinner Margaret
Fell began suddenly to quake and tremble, as the

5

THE BEGINNING OF A NEW ERA 5!

early Quakers sometimes did in their meetings,
and the judge was "struck with amazement,"
as he beheld her, "and knew not what to think,
but was quiet and still." The children, too, were
all altered in manner and behavior. They were
all "quiet and still and grown sober, and could
not play on their music." The poor judge hardly
knew his own home, and he sat and wondered.

A little later George himself arrived. Mistress
Fell came quietly to the parlor where the per-
plexed judge was sitting alone and asked if George
Fox might come in and talk with him. Judge
Fell said, "Yes." George came in with his hat on
his head and without paying any of the customary
compliments. He spoke almost at once of his
mission in the world and told the judge simply
and plainly the message which he preached every-
where. As he went on talking the family and
servants gathered into the parlor; James Nayler
and Richard Farnsworth came in and George
preached on, "very excellently," Margaret Fell's
account says, "as ever I heard him." "He opened
Christ's and the apostles ' practices which they
were in, in their day. And he opened the night
of apostasy, since the apostles' days, and laid
open the priests and their practices in the apos-
tasy; and if all England had been there, I thought
they could not have denied the truth of those
things."

52 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX

It was a great crisis in Fox's life and very much
depended on the decision which the prominent
judge before him should give. He was used to
hearing important cases and of going straight to
the central point. So now he did not allow the
stories he had heard to influence him. He made
nothing of the lack of formal compliments. He
calmly weighed the words of the man speaking
in his parlor and he believed that they were true.
He said little. He went to bed "very quiet," but
"he clearly saw the truth." The next morning
"priest Lampitt" came and started a counter-
offensive. But it was no use; it was too late.
"My husband," Margaret says, "had seen so
much the night before that the priest got little
entrance upon him."

A little later, Judge Fell of his own accord
offered the use of the Hall as a meeting, place for
Friends and, though he himself never joined them,
he appreciated their message, he showed them
much kindness, he opposed those who persecuted
them and he would often sit quietly in his own
room, adjoining the large meeting room of the
Hall, with his door ajar, and listen to the Quaker
preaching. And so until his death, a few years
later, the old judge and Parliamentarian gave the
new movement his respect and blessing, though
he felt himself too old to change his ways and
religious habits; and he let his wife and daughters

THE BEGINNING OF A NEW ERA 53

have full liberty to worship God as their hearts
prompted them.

While the cause of Fox was gaining this power-
ful support and he was adding so many important
persons to his new-born Society, his opponents
were more than ever resolved to crush him and
stop his influence. Justice Sawrey, "the first
stirrer up of cruel persecution in the North," was
the leader of the opposition forces in Westmore-
land and he and others inflamed the mob-element
to make Fox's work in that district henceforth
impossible. The first collision of forces came at
Ulverston, where Fox, with the word of God in
his soul, "like a fire and a hammer," tried to preach
again on a "lecture-day." Justice Sawrey roused
the people to a furious rage and set them on the
preacher. Fox says, "They fell on me in the
steeple-house; knocked me down, kicked me and
trampled upon me." After much uproar and con-
flict between those who opposed Fox and those
who sympathized with him, he was dragged to
"the common moss-side" and there beaten with
staves and hedge-stakes, and with holm or holly-
bushes until, unconscious, he fell down upon the
wet common. "When I recovered," the Journal
says, " and saw myself lying in a watery common,
and the people standing about me, I lay still a
little while; and the power of the Lord sprang
through me, and the Eternal Refreshings refreshed

54 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX

me, so that I stood up again in the strengthening
power of the Eternal God; and stretching out my
arms amongst them I said with a loud voice,
'Strike again; here are my arms, my head and my
cheeks." ;

"There was in the company," the graphic ac-
count continues, "a mason, a professor, but a rude
fellow; he with his walking rule-staff gave me a
blow with all his might, just over the back of my
hand, as it was stretched out; with which blow my
hand was so bruised and my arm so benumbed,
that I could not draw it unto me again; so that
some of the people cried out, * he hath spoiled his
hand for ever having the use of it any more.'
But I looked at it in the love of God (for I was in
the love of God to them all, that had persecuted
me) and after a while the Lord's power sprang
through me again and through my hand and arm,
so that in a moment I recovered strength in my
hand and arm, in the sight of them all."

Thereupon the unconquered and fearless man
was "moved of the Lord" to go back to Ulverston
and walk through the market-place where many
people were gathered. As he was going through
the market-place a soldier, belted and armed, met
him and said with admiration: "Sir, I see you are
a man, and I am ashamed and grieved that you
should be so abused. If I can do anything to
assist you, let me know." Fox quietly told his

THE BEGINNING OF A NEW ERA 55

unknown soldier-friend that "the Lord's power
was over all," and that he needed no sword.
That night when Fox got back to Swarthmore
Hall his body and arms were "yellow, black and
blue, with blows and bruises," but his spirit was
triumphant.

A still more fierce and brutal assault was made
upon him two weeks later at Walney, a little is-
land which skirts the western coast of Furness.
He went to Walney with James Nayler and had a
meeting in the town of Cockan on the island. A
man came into the meeting with a cocked pistol
and asked for George Fox. The people ran away
in great fear, but Fox stepped up to the man with-
out fear of the pistol. The man aimed the pistol
at Fox and snapped the trigger, but the pistol
"would not go off." The people tried to seize
the man, to prevent him from doing mischief, but
Fox was "moved in the Lord's power" to speak
to him, which struck such a fear into his soul that
he trembled and went and hid himself away.

But the next morning, in another part of the
island, a mob of forty men "with staves, clubs
and fishing poles" fell upon Fox, beating him
and pushing him toward the sea, aiming appar-
ently to drown him, which they almost did. It
seems that the people all believed that Fox had
"bewitched" James Lancaster, one of their towns-
men who was "convinced" by Fox's preaching

56 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX

and had become a Quaker. Full of rage and led
on by Lancaster's wife, they rushed at the gentle
Fox, knocked him down, stunned him and rained
volleys of stones upon him. When he came back
to consciousness, he saw James Lancaster shielding
him with his own body while Lancaster's wife was
trying to dash stones at his face. Lancaster suc-
ceeded in getting his wounded friend into a boat
and so rescuing him from the frantic mob which
stoned the boat until it was out beyond their
range. Meantime they discovered James Nayler
who was left behind and they fell upon him, crying,
"Kill him, kill him." Nayler also had a narrow
escape, but eventually managed to get off with
only heavy bruises. When Fox and Lancaster
landed from their boat across the channel on the
mainland, another crowd came at them with
"pitchforks, flails and staves," crying, "Kill him,
knock him on the head, bring the cart and carry
him away to the church yard." He fortunately
got away from the rabble alive, though covered
with bruises and besmeared all over with miry
dirt, and so sore that the next day he was unable
to ride on the horse which Margaret Fell, hearing
of his experience, sent to fetch him back to Swarth-
more Hall.

Not having killed him by mob violence and
not being able by persecution to stop the impetus
of his movement, his opponents now tried to get

THE BEGINNING OF A NEW ERA 57

him imprisoned on the charge that he had claimed
to be divine and equal with God! A court warrant
was issued against him, while Judge Fell was
absent on business, but when Judge Fell returned
the officials were afraid to carry it out and so did
not "serve it" on Fox. He, however, rode to the
city of Lancaster at the time of the court sessions
to defend himself. Judge Fell, loyal to his guest,
went with him, and stood by him, like the brave
man he was. Fox not only cleared himself of the
charges in the unserved warrant, but he was given
a public opportunity in the court room to declare
his message, which he did in such a way that many
prominent persons in Lancaster were convinced by
it. This affair at the sessions called forth a famous
little book from Fox's pen one of the first of
many such which he called, "Saul's Errand to
Damascus, with His Packet of Letters from the
High Priest against the Disciples of the Lord."
Another attempt was made at the January session
of the court in Lancaster to try Fox, on a similar
charge, but Colonel West, the clerk of the assize, re-
fused to issue the warrant and told the judge that he
was ready to offer up his estate and even his body
for Fox, whom he believed to be innocent. Fox,
hearing that he might be summoned, went straight
to Lancaster to confront his adversaries, but "the
Lord's power was over all and gave dominion."
For many weeks following, during the spring

58 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX

of 1653, with his headquarters at Swarthmore Hall,
he labored in Westmoreland, Cumberland, Lan-
cashire and the western part of Yorkshire, with
the usual experiences of success and fierce persecu-
tion. Sitting one day in April at Swarthmore
Hall, when Judge Fell and Justice Gervase Benson
were discussing the news and talking of events
in Parliament, of which Judge Fell was probably
still a member, Fox was suddenly "moved to tell
them that before that day two weeks the Parlia-
ment should be broken up and the speaker plucked
out of his chair." Two weeks passed, and Justice
Benson once more visited Swarthmore, this time
with the news that Oliver Cromwell had expelled
the "Rump," as it was called, of the Long Parlia-
ment, and had "plucked the speaker out of his
chair." "George, I see," he told Judge Fell, "is
a true prophet."

It was not, however, because he foresaw an
occasional event that George Fox was a " prophet ";
it was rather because he saw, more clearly than
most did, the truth about man's soul and the real,
spiritual nature of religion, and because he was
able, through sacrifice and suffering, to make
others see. "To receive and go with a message
and to have a word from the Lord, as the prophets
and apostles had and did, and as I bad done" he
told the priests who came to discuss with him at
Swarthmore, was the real mark of living religion.

CHAPTER VII

THE MEETING WITH OLIVER CROMWELL

IN midsummer of 1653, George Fox came to
Carlisle. He had his first meeting here in the
Abbey with Baptists and soldiers, many of whom
were "convinced." Then he went to the Castle
and preached to the garrison, telling the soldiers
that Christ within them would be their teacher
and their guide, if they would watch for the divine
Light and obey it, when it revealed itself to them.
He went also to the market place and warned all
who were selling merchandise against cheating and
against all forms of unfair or dishonest dealing.
While he was speaking a man cried out against him
and Fox "set his eyes upon him and spoke to him
in the power of the Lord," whereupon the man,
who could not stand the gaze, cried: " Do not pierce
me so with thy eyes; keep thy eyes off me."

Finally Fox went on Sunday morning to the
cathedral and, "after the priest had done,"
"preached the truth to the people and declared
the word of life amongst them." The Journal
says that the power of the Lord was so dreadful
among them that the people trembled and shook,
and many thought that the "steeple-house" shook!

59

60 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX

A party of the people, led on by the magistrates'
wives, rose up in rage against him, but the soldiers
sided with him and rallied around him. In the midst
of the tumult a file of soldiers, at the governor's
order, came down from the garrison and arrested
him, though the soldiers who had heard him re-
mained very friendly and sympathetic. He was
committed to prison on the charge of being "a
blasphemer, a heretic and a seducer!"

As Fox had been in prison once before at Derby
on the charge of blasphemy there was grave danger
that he would now be hanged, if he were found
guilty by the court a second time. He was abomin-
ably treated in the prison, put into the worst
dungeon "with moss-troopers [cut-throats] thieves
and murderers," in a place full of insects and
not fit for cattle to live in. Beside this vile treat-
ment, he was frequently cudgeled by the brutal
jailer, who "beat Friends as if he had been beating
a pack of wool." When the prisoner went to the
grate to get his food, the jailer would beat him
off "with a great staff." On one occasion, when
the jailer was fiercely beating him with his cudgel,
Fox began to "sing in the Lord's power." The
jailer went away and got a fiddler and brought
him into the dungeon and set him playing. Fox
was "moved in the everlasting power of the Lord
God to sing," and, he adds, "my voice drowned
them and struck them and confounded them."

THE MEETING WITH OLIVER CROMWELL 6l

Some of his powerful, influential friends, notably
Anthony Pearson and Gervase Benson, wrote
vigorous letters to the Carlisle authorities in his
behalf and parliamentary influence from London
was exercised in his favor, so that after an impris-
onment of seven weeks Fox was released without
undergoing a trial.

While he was in the Carlisle prison a young lad
of sixteen, named James Parnell, walked a hun-
dred and fifty miles to have an interview with the
famous Quaker. He was "convinced" and be-
came one of the most wonderful and effective of
all the young preachers of the Light. He became
a gentle saint, like St. Francjs, and when in Col-
chester, where he labored as the first Quaker
apostle in that district, a brutal man struck him
with a great staff and said "Take that for Jesus
Christ's sake," the young lad answered, "Friend,
I do receive it for Jesus Christ's sake." Here in a
terrible hole in Colchester Castle "Little James"
met his death, after valiant work for Christ, and
so became the first Quaker martyr.

Meantime the Quaker cause was powerfully
advancing. New districts were constantly being
visited by the bands of workers, new preachers
were being won for the work and the first simple
stage of organization was now begun. Of all the
efforts to tell England about the Quaker message
none were more remarkable than those which

62 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX

were made in London and Bristol. The two mes-
sengers who came to London to tell the people of
that city about the Light of Christ in the lives
of men were Francis Howgill and Edward Bur-
rough, who, as we have seen, had once been
"Seekers." They were young men, full of life and
enthusiasm and powerful preachers. They at once
produced a profound impression. Howgill wrote
joyously, "By the arm of the Lord all falls be-
fore us." "Astonishment took hold" upon the
people and multitudes were convinced. It was
without doubt a new kind of preaching and it
reached the hearts of men and women as nothing
had done for generations before. No less extraor-
dinary was the effect of the preaching of Audland
and Camm in Bristol. They discovered in and
around the city communities of Seekers like those
in the northern counties and here, again, these
waiting people came over in multitudes to join
those who believed that they were happy finders.
Sometimes more than 3000 people came to their
meetings and they write with enthusiasm that
their "net is likely to break with fishes."

George Fox, too, was having vast throngs at
meetings in the north. Many thousands the
Journal says, were at "a mighty meeting" at
Synderhill Green, near Halifax, and "the Lord's
power and truth was over all." Great meetings
were later held in Lincolnshire and in many other

THE MEETING WITH OLIVER CROMWELL 63

counties, as Fox traveled south. He came, in his
journeyings, to his old home at Fenny Drayton
which he had not visited for three years. Here
he had long and vigorous discussions with "priest
Stephens" and with eight other clergymen who
came to his help. "The Lord's power came over
all" and his "truth confounded them." George's
father, good old "Righteous Christer," though he
still attended the church and had not been com-
pletely "convinced," listened with keen apprecia-
tion to his son's words and struck his cane on the
ground and said, "Truly, I see, he that will stand
to the truth, it will carry him out [triumphantly]."
Even "priest Stephens" said, "What might George
not have been, if it had not been for the Quakers!'*
After many experiences in his home neighbor-
hood Fox went on with his travels, until he came
to Whetstone in the same county as Drayton, i. e.,
Leicestershire, where he planned to hold a meeting
with Friends who were coming in from the sur-
rounding district. A band of soldiers from Col-
onel Hacker's regiment came to this meeting,
evidently suspecting there was some plot brewing
against Oliver Cromwell. The troopers stopped
the meeting and took George Fox, with one of his
companions, to Colonel Hacker. Hacker seems to
have been convinced that Fox and his friends were
plotting to overthrow the government and pos-
sibly intended to restore the Stuarts! He en-

64 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX

deavored to make the Quaker traveler promise
not to hold any more meetings, but quite naturally
he failed to get such a promise! Whereupon he
decided to send Fox to London to be dealt with
by Oliver Cromwell himself. Before sending him
to London, the Colonel made one more effort to
induce his prisoner to give the desired promise.
He had Fox brought to his bedroom in the early
morning and asked him if he would promise.
George replied, "I shall go to meetings whenever
the Lord orders me to go." "Well, then," said
Colonel Hacker, "you must go to the Protector."
Fox, thereupon, kneeled by his bedside and asked
the Lord to forgive him. "And when the day
of thy misery and trial comes upon thee," Fox
said to him, "I bid thee remember what I had
said to thee now." When Colonel Hacker was
about to be executed a few years later he did
"remember."

Captain Drury, who was given charge of taking
Fox to Cromwell, kept asking him on their journey
up to London, if he was not ready now to " promise "
not to hold meetings and so have his liberty.
The captain got no results. As they put up at
inns on the way Fox was "moved of the Lord to
warn the people that the day of the Lord was
coming." And so the strange procession went on
until they came to London and Captain Drury
lodged his prisoner in the "Mermaid Inn," and

THE MEETING WITH OLIVER CROMWELL 65

went to make his report to the Protector. Crom-
well requested that Fox sign a document promis-
ing not to take up arms against the government!
The Quaker prisoner then wrote a letter to tell
Oliver Cromwell that God had sent him (George
Fox) to turn people from darkness to light, not to
bear arms against anybody; to be a witness against
evil and hate and violence, to bring men away
from swords and guns and killing and to lead
them to a kind of life which would make war
impossible. It gradually dawned upon the mind
of the captain that his prisoner was not very
dangerous after all and finally he took him in an
informal way to Whitehall to see the Protector.

It was in the early morning and Cromwell was
in the process of being dressed by his valet when
Fox was ushered in to his presence. The meeting
was in the famous Whitehall palace. "Peace be
to this house," was the salutation with which
George Fox entered the Protector's bedroom.
Here they were face to face, two of the most
remarkable and two of the most typical men of
the seventeenth century in England. They were
very unlike and yet they had much in common.
They were both the product of great spiritual
forces and religious movements and both were try-
ing, each in his own way, to free England from
the tyranny of the past. Both feared God and
nothing else in the world, and both were sincere

66 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX

men, who meant to be true to the light which
they had to live by. What a scene it was for some
great painter to portray. Throughout the entire
interview George Fox wore his hat, and Cromwell,
before whom everybody else uncovered and bowed
or kneeled, was not the least offended, but under-
stood by a kind of fine instinct that his visitor
meant him no disrespect. The two brave men
talked together much about truth and much
about religion, and they seem to have understood
one another fairly well and to have had consider-
able agreement in their talk. Fox says that Oliver
"carried himself very moderately." Oliver told
George that he quarreled too much with the min-
isters. It was a good point to make and there was
some real truth in it. Fox claimed that it was the
ministers who began the quarrel, that they were
forever attacking him, though he admitted that
he often charged the ministers with preaching for
money, with being covetous and greedy, and with
always having their eyes on the main chance for
their own advancement. Several times Oliver
declared "that is so," "that is true," "that is a
fact." Fox pointed out in his usual way that it
was not enough to read the Scriptures and to
claim to believe them; that to be a true Christian
one must have the Spirit and life and power of the
apostles and prophets who wrote the Scriptures,
and not merely to have their books, and Oliver

THE MEETING WITH OLIVER CROMWELL 6j

apparently thought so too. He caught George by
the hand, his eyes filled with tears, and he said,
"Come again to my house, for if thou and I were
but an hour a day together, we should be nearer one
to the other." The great man looked up kindly
and added, I wish no more ill to thee than I do
to my own soul." To which George replied, "If
thou didst wish ill to me thou wouldst wrong thy
own soul."

When it was time to go Fox, like an ancient
prophet, bid the Lord Protector hearken to God's
voice, keep in the fear of God, that he might stand
and live and act in God's counsel and guidance.
"If thou wilt do that," he said, "God will keep
thee tender and free from hardness of heart. But
if thou shalt not hear God's voice, thy heart will
become hardened." "That is so," Cromwell con-
fessed, and the two men parted.

The Protector at once saw, with his keen eye
which looked through men, that this man was no
plotter, no dangerous insurrectionist. He sent
out word by Captain Drury, before Fox had left
the place, that he was at full liberty and might
go whither he would. We can almost hear his
visitor calmly say, "How otherwise." By Crom-
well's order Fox was then brought into the great
hall where the gentlemen of the Protector's court
gathered to dine. It soon began to dawn upon
the mind of Fox that he was being taken to a

68 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX

banquet in the hall of the palace instead of to a
prison and immediately he declined to accept
the favor. He sent a message back to the Lord
Protector that he could not eat his food nor par-
take of his drink. When this message reached
Cromwell he said: "Now I see that there is a people
risen up that I cannot win with gifts, honors,
offices or places; but all other sects and people
I can/' Fox returned to the "Mermaid" a free
man and paid for his own breakfast.

This unexpected visit to London gave the
Quaker apostle a fine opportunity to proclaim his
message in the great metropolis, which he at once
proceeded to do with power and success. He had
many "great and powerful meetings" in the city
and a vast number of people were "convinced"
who swelled the rapidly growing new Society.
He was "moved" also "to declare the day of the
Lord" to the people in Whitehall palace and
" there was a great convincement in the Protector's
house and family," though he did not this time
see the stern old warrior who had become the
head of the nation.

CHAPTER VIII

IN ENGLAND'S WORST PRISON

AFTER the interview with Cromwell and the
"powerful meetings" in London, Fox started off
again upon his almost incessant travels. Probably
no man in the seventeenth century knew all of
England as intimately as he did. He visited not
only the great cities, but the small towns, villages
and hamlets as well. On horseback or on foot
he traveled both the great roads and the country
lanes. He met and talked with all types of people
and he saw all sides of life.

Leaving London he went first to "a great
meeting" at Luton in Bedfordshire. He declared
"God's eternal truth" and "people generally
were convinced." He soon returned to London,
"where Friends were finely established in the
truth," and then he took a journey through the
towns and villages of Kent. In his wide journey-
ings he went to Colchester and had a brief farewell
visit with James Parnell a short time before that
brave young martyr's life was ended. It was at
this period sometime in the autumn of 1655
that he rode through the crowd of Cambridge
students who could not unhorse him and who

69

70 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX

wondered at the shine on his face! Not long
after this, when he was riding with some of his
companions through the famous town of Warwick,
the "rude people" gathered with stones and
sticks to give them a rough passage through the
streets. The Journal tells the story well: "One
of them took hold of my horse 's bridle and broke
it; but the horse drawing back threw him under
him. Though the bailiff saw this, yet he did not
stop, nor so much as rebuke, the rude multitude,
so that it was much we were not slain or hurt
in the streets; for the people threw stones and
struck at us, as we rode along the town. When
we were quite out of the town, I told Friends
it was upon me from the Lord that I must go back
into the town again. " " So," the account goes on,
"I passed through the market in the dreadful
power of God, declaring the word of life to them,
and John Crook [one of his companions] followed
me. Some struck at me; but the Lord's power
was over them and gave me dominion over all."

In the inn at Baldock, one of the many places
visited on this tour of counties, "two desperate
fellows" fell to fighting furiously, so that "none
durst come nigh to part them." "But I was
moved in the Lord's power," Fox says, "to go to
them; and when I had loosed their hands, I held
one of them by one hand and the other by the other,
showed them the evil of their doings and reconciled

IN ENGLAND S WORST PRISON JI

them one to the other and they were so loving and
thankful to me that people admired it!"

After a short visit again to London, where he
saw James Nayler and had a foresight that some
sad trouble was coming to him "a fear struck
me concerning him" Fox started off on a great
spiritual campaign through the western counties
of England. Edward Pyott, a former captain,
and William Salt of London were his companions
in travel. It proved to be hard and barren country
for Fox's spiritual message. The people were
light and flippant. They were not prepared by
long spiritual training for the new teaching, as
the people in the North had been. The travelers
found few "sober" or "tender" people who were
ready to be "convinced." At Kingsbridge, in
the inn, they found many people drinking and
Fox was "moved of the Lord to go in amongst
them, and direct them to the light which Christ,
the heavenly Man, had enlightened them with:
by which they might see all their evil ways, words
and deeds, and by the same light they might also
see Jesus their Saviour. The innkeeper stood
uneasy, seeing that the speaking hindered his
guests from drinking; and as soon as the last
words were out of my mouth, he snatched up the
candle and said, 'Come, here is a light for you
to go to your chamber.' Next morning, when
he was cool I represented to him what an uncivil

72 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX

thing it was for him to do so, then warning him
of the day of the Lord, we got ready and passed
away." At Plymouth the cause prospered better
and they had a "precious meeting." "The Lord's
power came over the people" here. Many were
"convinced," among them Lady Elizabeth Tre-
lawny, daughter of a baronet, and a "fine meeting
was settled there in the Lord's power."

Trouble awaited the little party in Cornwall.
The magistrates were resolved to have no Quakers
in their district. At Marazion, which Fox calls
"Market-Jew," the constables summoned Fox
and Pyott to appear before the mayor and alder-
men of the town. They had no warrant to make
the arrest with, and when Fox asked to see the
warrant, one of the constables pulled out his mace
from under his cloak and said that was his warrant.
Fox, as usual, took the opportunity of delivering
his message to the mayor and other officials who
seem to have been impressed and were ready to
let the little party go on unmolested. But un-
fortunately they were met about three miles from
the town by an officer belonging to the staff of
Major Ceely who was stationed at St. Ives. The
officer took to the major a copy of a paper which
Fox had written and distributed telling about the
light within. This paper aroused Major Ceely
and the people of the town and while the little
party was waiting to have a horse shod, and while

IN ENGLAND S WORST PRISON 73

Fox, meantime, had gone a little way off to look
at Bristol Channel, Pyott and Salt were dragged
away to Major Ceely's house. Here Fox found
them, surrounded by "rude people," "more like
Indians than like Christians." The proceedings
in their examination were very irregular and
informal. One of the priests who was present
asked Fox why he didn't have his hair cut and
other "frivolous" things were said and done.
Finally they were put under a guard of soldiers,
"who were hard and wild, like the justice himself;
nevertheless we warned the people of the day
of the Lord and declared the truth to them. The
next day he sent us, guarded by a party of horse,
with swords and pistols, to Redruth."

The next day was Sunday "First-day," Fox
calls it but the soldiers were determined, never-
theless, to travel forward with their prisoners.
It was, however, not easy to make progress. Fox
insisted on preaching to the soldiers, while Pyott
was at the same time preaching to the townspeople
in Redruth. Then Fox went to give his message
to the people in the town while Pyott spoke in
his turn to the soldiers. William Salt, meantime,
got away and went to the "steeple-house" to
give a message to the priest and his congregation.
The people got in "a mighty rage" and came with
a rush, "ready to kill us," Fox says, "but I de-
clared the day of the Lord and the word of eternal

74 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX

life" to them. "When we were got to the town's
end," he continues, "I was moved of the Lord
to go back again. . . . The soldiers drew out their
pistols and swore I should not go back. I heeded
them not, but rode back and they rode after me."
And without the least fear of the soldiers' pistols
he finished his religious mission in Redruth!

In the evening of this strenuous Sunday the
party arrived at Falmouth, then called Smethick,
and the chief constable of the town and many
"sober people" came to the inn to have discourse
with Fox "concerning the things of God," and
the tired man's heart was much refreshed. But
the rough and lawless soldiers, who were under
the direction of a thoroughly unprincipled leader,
named Keat, continually annoyed and abused
Fox and his friends. Keat brought "a rude and
wicked man" into Fox's room at the inn, and
"this evil-minded man" went "huffing up and
down the room." Fox bade him "fear the Lord."
"Whereupon," the Journal says, "he ran upon
me, struck me with both hands, and placing his
leg behind me, would fain have thrown me down,
but he could not for I stood stiff and still, and
let him strike!"

The escort was ordered according to the magis-
trate's warrant, to conduct the prisoners to the
governor of Pendennis Castle, Captain Fox, if he
was at home, if not to convey them to Launceston

IN ENGLAND'S WORST PRISON 75

Jail. As Captain Fox was not at home at the
time, the Friends had to go on, with their royster-
ing escort, to Launceston. On their journey
thither they met General Desborough, a brother-
in-law of Cromwell, who, under the Protector, ad-
ministered the government in the six western
counties. One of Desborough's officers at once
recognized Fox and called out to him, "Oh, Mr.
Fox, what are you doing here ? " "I am a prisoner,"
the latter replied. "Alack," said the officer, "for
what?" Fox explained how he and his party had
been arrested while engaged in religious work, and
at once the military man offered to speak to
Desborough about it and get him freed. The re-
lease might easily have been secured had not a
discussion arisen about the light of Christ within.
Desborough said he did not believe in it and spoke
strongly against it. That was too much for Fox to
stand and he reproved the great man, who forth-
with told the soldiers to proceed to Launceston.

The little party had another miserable night in
the inn at Bodmin, not far from their destination.
The outrageous captain of the escort, Keat, under-
took to put Fox in a room with a raving lunatic,
who had "a naked rapier in his hand." "What
now, Keat," Fox cried out, "what trick hast thou
played now, to put me into a room where there is
a man with his naked rapier?" "Oh," said he,
"pray hold your tongue, for if you speak to this

76 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX

man we cannot all rule him, he is so devilish."
He finally got another room, away from the mad-
man, but the "hard and darkened" soldiers drank
and roared all night so that there was no sleep for
the weary prisoners.

The next morning they were brought to the
terrible Cornwall Jail at Launceston where they
were to spend the following eight months from
midwinter to early autumn. During the first
nine weeks they were decently treated while they
were waiting for their trial to come oft". At about
the spring equinox Chief Justice Glyn came to
Launceston for the trial of the prisoners. The ru-
mor had spread that Fox was likely to be hung and
a multitude of people poured into the little town
to see the famous Quaker go by. As the pikemen
took Fox through the streets to the court room
they had "much ado" to get through the crowd
which packed the town. As the three Quakers with
their hats on their heads filed into the room be-
fore the bewigged Chief Justice, Fox "was moved
to say, 'Peace be amongst you!" Judge Glyn
with a quizzical look turned to the jailer and said,
"What be these you have brought here into
court?" "Prisoners, my Lord," said the jailer.
"Why do you not put off your hats?" the Judge
asked the prisoners. No answer. "Put off your
hats." Still neither answer nor action. "The
court commands you to put off your hats," sternly

IN ENGLAND S WORST PRISON JJ

said the judge. Then Fox quietly said, "Where
did ever any magistrate, king or judge, from Moses
to Daniel, command any to put off their hats,
when they came before them in their courts ? And
if the law of England doth command any such
thing, show me that law either written or printed/'
"Take him away," shouted the Chief Justice, "I'll
firk him," i. e., "trounce him."

The prisoners were taken out and put in with
the thieves who were awaiting trial. Soon the
judge had them brought back into the court room.
"Come," said the judge, "when had they hats
from Moses to Daniel? Come, answer me. I
have you fast now." Fox replied, "Thou mayest
read in the third of Daniel that the three children
were cast into the fiery furnace by Nebuchad-
nezzar's command, with their coats, their hose and
their bats on!" "Take them away!" shouted the
judge. All day the strange proceedings went on
in court. Absurd charges, which apparently no-
body believed, were made against Fox by Major
Ceely. Again and again the hat-issue arose. Once
the jailer took off the hats and handed them to
the prisoners who at once put them on again.
Finally the three men were fined 13, 6s. 8d. for
"contempt of court," and ordered to be imprisoned
until the fine should be paid which anybody
might know would be never.

Up till the time of the trial the three Quakers

78 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX

had been paying the jailer seven shillings a week
apiece for their board and seven shillings for the
keep of their horses. After the trial was over they
refused to continue this payment. Whereupon
the jailer, who was himself a criminal and bore
the mark of a branding iron, became fierce with
anger and thrust them into the appalling dungeon
called "Doomsdale." Fox's account of this dun-
geon is too awful to copy for my readers. One
wonders how any person could have lived in it
at all. In fact few ever did come out of it alive.
It was generally believed in the prison that this
dungeon was haunted by the ghosts of those who
had died in it, and the jailer and his wild friends
tried to scare Fox with this story of the ghosts.
But he did not take fright much more easily than
Luther did at the devils in Worms. " I told them,"
Fox says, " that if all the spirits and devils in hell
were there, I was over them in the power of God
and feared no such thing!" We may smile at
Fox's refusal to take off his hat in court, which
seems to a modern person a harmless courtesy, but
nobody can well miss the brave and heroic spirit
in this man, who looked upon "hat-honor" as
downright disobedience to God.

About midsummer an order of the court was
issued declaring that the door of Doomsdale should
be opened and that the prisoners should have
permission to clean up the abominable dungeon

IN ENGLAND S WORST PRISON 79

and to buy their food in the town. A saintly
woman, named Ann Downer, came down to Laun-
ceston from London to cook their food and to
give them what human service was allowed in the
existing prison system. Another manifestation of
love was given which deeply touched Fox's heart.
Humphrey Norton went to Cromwell and offered
to go to Doomsdale and suffer there in place of
Fox if the Protector would give him permission
to do it. Of course this could not be granted, but
the request made a deep impression on Oliver
Cromwell. He turned to his courtiers and said,
"Which of you would do so much for me, if I
were in the same condition?" Hugh Peters, the
famous preacher, chaplain to the Protector, told
Cromwell that there was no better way to spread
the teachings of the Quakers than to keep George
Fox shut up in Launceston Castle. The net result
was that an order came from Whitehall to Major
General Desborough that some way must be
found to free the Quakers who were in Launceston
Jail.

CHAPTER IX

ANOTHER KIND OF CATASTROPHE

IT took some time to get George Fox out of
Launceston Jail even after General Desborough
received the request from London to have him
set at liberty. In the first place Desborough
undertook to secure a promise from Fox that he
would go home and not preach any more. He
would of course have spent the rest of his days in
Doomsdale before he would make that promise.
Next, there was the problem of the unpaid fees
to the jailer. A Puritan named Colonel Bennett
held a lease of the jail and he received a certain
proportion of the fees which the jailer squeezed
out of the wretched prisoners who were put into
Launceston Castle. Fox and his friends contended
that they were "innocent sufferers" and could pay
no fees for the privilege of staying in Doomsdale !
On this point, again, Fox was ready to stand out
forever, but the authorities finally yielded and let
the prisoners go, without any conditions, on the
13 th of September, 1656. One very amusing
episode which occurred during this imprisonment
will serve to show the power which Fox, even when
in a filthy prison where the jailer called him "a

80

IN ENGLAND'S WORST PRISON 81

hatchet-faced dog," exercised on men. A certain
Colonel Rouse, with a large company of attendants
and companions, came to Launceston to see Fox.
"He was as full of words and talk," Fox says, "as
ever I heard in my life, so that there was no speak-
ing to him. At length I asked him whether he
had ever been at school." "At school!" said he,
"yes." "At school!" said the soldiers, "doth he
say so to our colonel who is a scholar?" "Then,"
said Fox, "if he be a scholar he ought to know
what belongs to questions and answers, he should
be still and receive answers to what he hath said."
"Then," the account continues, "I was moved to
speak the word of life to him in God's dreadful
power; which came so over him that he could not
open his mouth: his face swelled and was red like
a turkey; his lips moved and he mumbled some-
thing; but the people thought he would have fallen
down. I stepped to him and he said he was never
so in his life before: for the Lord's power stopped
the evil power in him; so that he was almost
choked. The man was ever after very loving to
Friends, and not so full of airy words to us. The
Lord's power came over him, and the rest that
were with him."

It was at this time, while Fox was in Launceston,
that the "Fifth-Monarchy-men," as they were
called, were going about in England trying to con-
vince the people that Christ was going to come that

82 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX

year and set up His thousand-year reign on the
earth. There had been, they declared, four great
world-kingdoms and now Christ's reign would end
them all and begin the Fifth and last kingdom.
Fox told them they were looking in the wrong
place for Christ and His kingdom. They thought
it was to be an outward kingdom, like Caesar's,
and that Christ would come as a monarch, like
Charlemagne, but Fox told them that Christ had
come already and was now here. He comes as a
divine and heavenly presence to the souls of men
and wishes to rule their lives and to reign in their
hearts. His kingdom comes as fast as people
learn to live His way and to do His will and to
let His spirit conquer the evil in them and raise
up the good. Nobody will ever find Him if they
look for Him in the sky or if they expect to see
Him sitting on a throne in some capital city, like
London.

As soon as the doors of Launceston Castle were
opened to them the three prisoners who had
suffered so unmercifully for nine dreary months
rode away on their horses, free men and full of
joy. A worse disaster, however, than Doomsdale
was awaiting Fox. That was the "fall" of his old
friend and fellow-laborer, James Nayler. As the
three men continued their journey they came to
Exeter, and here they found James Nayler and
many other Friends in prison. Fox went to the

IN ENGLAND'S WORST PRISON 83

prison to visit his friends and he at once saw that
James was out of the way and going wrong; as
Fox puts it, "he had run out into imaginations."
He had formed wild ideas, was misguided, and
was dreaming that he himself was to be treated
as a most exalted person. Fox was as gentle as
a mother to those who worked and suffered with
him, but he could also be like a flame of fire toward
those who were undermining the great work which
he believed God had sent him to do in the world.
He plainly told his old friend that he was off the
track and was turning against the power of God.
He showed him how dangerous was the path of
pride and how awful it was to turn light into dark-
ness, but the frank, well-meant words of warning
fell on deaf ears. Nayler tried to make a show of
love and would have kissed Fox, but the latter
would receive no sham kisses from one whose
spirit was plainly wrong. "James," he said,
"it will be harder for thee to get down thy rude
company [of followers] than it was for thee to set
them up."

Poor Nayler was not altogether to blame for
the wild, wrong course he took. He had, as Fox
said, "run out into imaginations." He had be-
come temporarily insane. The strain of his work,
the terrible persecutions he had undergone, the
dreadful prison experiences, and the unrestrained
imaginations and expectations prevailing around

84 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX

him, had all gone to his head and set it into sad
disorder. Soon after Fox left him at Exeter, he
was freed from prison and went to Bristol. Here
he allowed his misguided followers to get up a
"triumphal procession," while he imitated Christ
riding into Jerusalem. The little party of eight,
surrounding Nayler who rode on horseback, sang,
"Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Israel." Through
the rain and mud, the women spreading their
garments in the way, the strange, mad group
trudged on into Bristol, where they were all ar-
rested and thrust into prison. They all were sub-
jects for an insane asylum and they all needed the
care of a skillful physician of the mind, but they got
instead the only kind of treatment that England
knew how to give such people in the seventeenth
century. They called them "blasphemers" and
they dealt with them as criminals to be fright-
fully punished. After months of investigation
and trial James Nayler received his awful sentence.
He was to be set in the pillory in the Palace yard
at Westminster for two hours, and then be whipped
by the hangman through the streets for two hours
more. Three days later he was to stand again
in the pillory from eleven to one, when his tongue
was to be bored through with a hot iron and the
letter B (for blasphemer) was to be branded with
a burning iron on his forehead. Then he was to
be taken to Bristol and made to ride through the

ANOTHER KIND OF CATASTROPHE 85

city on horseback, with his face backward, and
be whipped in the market place. Finally, he was
to be imprisoned in Bridewell, London, until
Parliament should vote to release him, his im-
prisonment to be in solitary confinement, at hard
labor, without the use of pen, ink or paper. As
Nayler listened to the appalling sentence, while
the Speaker of the House of Commons read it to
him, he said, "God has given me a body: God
will, I hope, give me a spirit to endure it. The
Lord lay not these things to your charge."

Without complaining the poor victim took his
punishment. "He shrinked a little when the iron
came upon his forehead," but though the body
might wince the old-time spirit of the man re-
turned and rose to meet the awful crisis. He was
kept in solitary confinement for three years and
then Parliament the "Rump" voted his re-
lease. As soon as he could do so, after his release
from confinement, Nayler went to find George
Fox and to ask his forgiveness for the disgrace
and trouble which his deeds and acts had brought
upon the Society of Friends. Fox himself was
very ill and broken at this time and could not see
him, and in "a quiet spirit" and noble frame of
mind, the heavily disciplined man waited his
time for reconciliation. The reconciliation came
in London a little later, when "a healing spirit
did abound that day." James Nayler made a

86 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX

public confession of his errors and mistakes. There
were few dry eyes as the Friends gathered there in
the London meeting listened to the man who had
suffered so much for his blunders. George Fox
was there and he seemed "clothed with precious
wisdom/' as he "healed up the breach" between
himself and his friend.

Only a few months of life remained after this
for James Nayler. He started in the autumn
days of the Restoration year, 1660, to walk from
London to his home at Wakefield in Yorkshire.
He was weak and ill too weak and ill to journey
alone on foot, but he persevered by the force of his
unconquered spirit. He sat long periods at a time
by the roadside, lost in meditation, thinking of the
true home and the real country he was soon to
see when all his pains and trials would be over.
Robbers attacked him near Huntingdon and left
the poor broken man bound. He was found by
kind friends who cared for him tenderly until his
spirit slipped away " to where beyond these voices
there is peace."

About two hours before he died James Nayler
spoke his farewell message, which is one of the
most beautiful testimonies that any erring, re-
pentant, much-forgiven man has left behind him.
It is as follows:

"There is a spirit which I feel that delights to
do no evil nor to revenge any wrong, but delights

ANOTHER KIND OF CATASTROPHE 87

to endure all things, in hope to enjoy its own in
the end. Its hope is to outlive all wrath and
contention, and to weary out all exaltation and
cruelty, or whatever is of a nature contrary to it-
self. It sees to the end of all temptations. As it
bears no evil in itself, so it conceives none in
thoughts to any other. If it be betrayed, it bears
it, for its crown is meekness, its life is everlasting
love unfeigned; and takes its kingdom with en-
treaty and not with contention, and keeps it by
lowliness of mind. In God alone it can rejoice,
though none else regard it, or can own its life.
It's conceived in sorrow, and brought forth without
any to pity it, nor doth it murmur at grief and
oppression. It never rejoiceth but through suf-
ferings: for with the world's joy it is murdered.
I found it alone, being forsaken. I have fellowship
therein with them who lived in dens and desolate
places in the earth, who through death obtained
this resurrection and eternal holy life."

This tragic experience had a great effect upon
the later life of George Fox. It made him very
much more careful to explain what he meant by the
light and life of Christ in the soul. He saw now
how easy it was for unbalanced people to push his
idea too far and to make impossible claims about
themselves. It was a hard and bitter lesson, but he
thoroughly learned it, and from this point onward
he was restrained and cautious in his expressions.

88 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX

We must now go back to the period following
the release from Launceston. Fox went steadily
on with his travels, holding meetings, many of
which were attended by great crowds of people,
sometimes by thousands. Coming to London in
October, 1656, he had another remarkable talk
with Oliver Cromwell. Near Hyde Park he saw a
great concourse of people, and looking more care-
fully he espied the Protector in the midst of the
throng. He rode straight up to the side of the
Protector's coach. Some of the lifeguards started
to put Fox away, but Cromwell at once recognized
him and forbade the guards to disturb him. "So,"
Fox says, "I rode by him [i. e., by his side] declaring
unto him what the Lord gave me to say unto him
of his condition and of the sufferings of Friends
in the nation, and how contrary to Christ this
persecution was and to the apostles and Christian-
ity, and so I rode by his coach till we came to
James' Park gate, and he desired me to come to
his house."

The next day Cromwell told one of his wife's
maids, Mary Saunders, a Quakeress, that he had
some good news for her. "George Fox has come
to town," he said, "and he rode from Hyde Park
to James* Park by my side." A little later, Fox
availed himself of Cromwell's invitation to his
house, and he went with Edward Pyott, his prison-
companion, to Whitehall. Once more Fox urged

ANOTHER KIND OF CATASTROPHE 89

upon the Protector the release of Friends who were
in prison and the cessation of religious persecution.
Then he directed Cromwell to the light of Christ
in his own heart, but the Protector had just been
having an interview with the famous Vice-Chan-
cellor of Oxford, Dr. Owen, a man very much
opposed to the Quaker teaching, and he spoke
against the light and belittled it. This attitude
aroused Fox, as it always did, and he discussed
the subject with much fervor and earnestness.
"The power of the Lord," Fox says, "rose up in
me and I was moved to bid him lay down his
crown at the feet of Jesus." Fox was standing
by a table and Cromwell came over and sat on
the edge of the table by him and they went on
discussing the light of Christ but without getting
any closer together in their religious views. There
can, however, be no doubt from the accounts that
Cromwell had a deep respect for Fox and it would
appear that he thought of him quite in the light of
a religious prophet. We shall hear more at a later
critical moment about laying the "crown" at the
feet of Jesus !

After an extensive journey through the counties
as far north as Yorkshire, with much success in
gaining convincements and with some hairbreadth
escapes, Fox went forth to break new ground in
Wales and Scotland. He had a powerful helper
for the Welsh campaign in John ap John, a fervent

go THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX

and faithful Welshman, who had been " convinced "
at Swarthmore in 1653. Great numbers of people
in Wales were brought into the Society through
this visit of 1657, and later on they migrated almost
in a body to Pennsylvania, when William Penn
began his "holy experiment" in that great colony.
A really wonderful meeting was held by the band
of Quaker travelers in Radnorshire where the
people lay in mighty throngs, "like a leaguer."
"I had a great travail on me," Fox says, "for the
salvation of the people. And so I passed to the
meeting and stood atop of a chair about three
hours, sometimes leaned my hand on a man's head,
and stood a pretty while before I began to speak.
Many people sat on horseback: and at last I felt
the power of the Lord went over all, and the Lord's
everlasting life and truth shined over all, and the
Scriptures were opened to them." The people
seem to have been deeply impressed and "they
turned to the Lord," as Fox puts it.

The journey in Scotland was not so rich in
results as was the one through Wales. The Scotch
people had accepted the religious system of John
Calvin as interpreted to them by John Knox and
this system was very unlike the Quaker conception
of religion. Fox found few persons there eager
for his teaching or responsive to it. They had not
been "prepared" for such ideas and they did not
give him the welcome which he found in many

ANOTHER KIND OF CATASTROPHE 9!

places. And yet he says, "When I first set my
horse's feet upon Scottish ground, I felt the seed
of God to sparkle about me, like innumerable
sparks of fire." He adds, however, "There is
abundance of thick, cloddy earth of hypocrisy and
falseness above, and a briery, brambly nature,
which is to be burnt up with God's Word, and
ploughed up with His spiritual plough, before God's
Seed brings forth heavenly and spiritual fruit to
His glory. But the husbandman is to wait in
patience."

Some of the very choicest spirits in the Society
of Friends came from Scotland and there was
undoubtedly "a seed of God" there, but the Pres-
byterian ministers were determined to make life
as uncomfortable as possible for Fox while he was
trying to find his scattered "seed." He was
ordered to appear before the Council in Edinburgh.
As he entered the room his hat was removed by
the doorkeeper and hung up until he came out.
He stood for a little while before the Council and
as no one said anything to him, he was "moved
of the Lord" to say "Peace be amongst you; wait
in the fear of the Lord, that ye may receive His
wisdom from above by which all things were made
and created; that by it ye may all be ordered,
and may order all things under your hand to God's
glory." The Council asked what business he had
in Scotland. "I came to visit the seed of God,"

Cp. THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX

he told them. "You must depart the nation of
Scotland by this day sen-night," i. e., in a week,
the Council ordered. He paid no attention to the
order, but went on with his work of visiting " the
seed." He came back to Edinburgh, passed the
sentries, rode up the street to the market place
and out at the gate. "We rode as it were," he
says, "against the cannon's mouth, or the sword's
point, but the Lord's power and immediate hand
carried us over the heads of all!"

CHAPTER X

THE END OF THE COMMONWEALTH ERA

GREAT changes in the government and in the
life of England were now coming on. Oliver Crom-
well, the Lord Protector, died on the 3rd of S