Presented by
The H. H. Mosher Fund
of
New England Yearly Meeting
of the
Religious Society of Friends
C7 ^
<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
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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 Sep-
tember, 1658, and a period of uncertainty and
perplexity followed the great man's departure.
George Fox appears to have followed political and
public events with a keen and watchful eye and
to have entered deeply into the struggle through
which the nation was passing. In the spring of
1657 there was a rumor afloat that Cromwell was
to be crowned king. On the 25th of March of
that year Parliament decided to offer the crown
to him and to request him to take the office and the
title. As soon as Fox heard of it he went at once
to warn Cromwell against accepting the kingship.
"I met him," the Journal says, "in the Park, and
told him that they that would put a crown on him
would take away his life, and he asked me, What
did I say? And I said again, They that sought
to put a crown on him would take away his life
and I bid him mind the crown that was immortal,
and he thanked me and bid me go to his house.
And then I was moved to write to him and told
93
94 E STORY OF GEORGE FOX
him how he would ruin his family and posterity
and bring darkness upon the nation if he did so."
On the 3rd of April and finally emphatically on the
8th of April, Cromwell refused to be made king.
Fox at this time wrote many papers to the
Protector on a variety of subjects. One of the
most interesting of his letters was the one he
wrote to Cromwell's beloved daughter, Lady
Elizabeth Claypole, when she lay ill with an in-
curable disease. "Friend," the letter begins to
the great Lady who had herself been a "seeker,"
"be still and cool in thy own mind and spirit
from thy own thoughts, and then thou wilt feel
the principle of God to turn thy mind to the Lord,
from whom cometh life, whereby thou mayest
receive His strength and power to allay all bluster-
ings, storms and tempests," and the letter ends
with these noble words: "And so thou shalt come
to know the Seed of God, which is the heir of the
promise of God, and of the world which hath no
end. . . . Ye shall receive the power of an end-
less life, the power of God which is immortal;
which brings the immortal soul up to the immortal
God, in whom it doth rejoice. So in the name of
the Lord Jesus Christ, God Almighty strengthen
thee. G. F." We are told that the letter "staid
the mind" of Lady Elizabeth and was afterwards
used to "settle the minds" of others who were
passing through suffering.
THE END OF THE COMMONWEALTH ERA 95
One more meeting occurred between Fox and
the Protector. It was about the middle of August,
two weeks before Cromwell's death. Fox says,
"I met him riding into Hampton Court Park, and
before I came at him, he was riding at the head
of his life-guards, and I saw and felt a waft of
death go forth against him, so that he looked like
a dead man." Fox spoke to him about the suffer-
ings of Friends, great numbers of whom were at
this time lying in the prisons of England. Crom-
well, as usual, was cordial and friendly to him and
invited him to the Palace. He went the next
day, but found the Protector too ill to see him.
"So," Fox writes, "I passed away and saw him
no more." Once more unexpectedly he did see
him, or at least his body, for when Charles II. was
safely established on the throne, Cromwell's body,
with the mighty spirit gone out of it, was dug up
from its grave and hung on the gallows at Tyburn,
and Fox says: "I saw him hanging there."
In the period of disturbance, distress and al-
most anarchy which followed the passing of the
great man, no one knew what the future had for
England. The nation was "rocking," the various
parties, as Fox says, were "plucking each other
to pieces," the old order was changing, yielding
place to new, and the stoutest hearts were full
of foreboding. For George Fox it was a time of
unusual travail of spirit. He passed through a
96 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX
period of serious illness and mental trouble, such
as he had not known since the days of his early
quest for light. He lay for some weeks only
partly conscious at a Friend's house in Reading.
His body underwent a profound change, his
countenance was altered, and many thought he
would not come back to life and health again.
As he lay in his strange borderland state, he
seemed to have a sight of what was coming to pass
and he felt that he could read what was passing
in the minds of those around him. He had, too,
a sight and sense of the restoration of King
Charles. Gradually he came back once more
to health and normal condition again. "The
Lord preserved me," he says, "by His power
and spirit through and over all, and in His power
I came to London again." In a short time he
was ready for hard journeys, heavy work, great
meetings and the stiff persecution which was an
almost continuous part of his life.
On the 8th of May, 1660, Charles Stuart was
proclaimed king and on the 29th of the same
month he entered London. Already on the 4th
of the preceding April Charles had issued his
famous declaration on the subject of liberty of
conscience, called the Declaration of Breda, from
the Dutch city where it was set forth. It said:
"We do declare a liberty to tender consciences,
and that no man shall be disquieted or called in
THE END OF THE COMMONWEALTH ERA gj
question for differences of opinion in matters of
religion, which do not disturb the peace of the king-
dom. " George Fox and his friends thought when
they read these fine words that their troubles
were over and that now they could hold their
precious truth in peace. They were, however,
to be sadly disappointed.
Already before Cromwell's death George Fox
had begun holding great general meetings once
or twice a year for the purpose of spreading his
teaching and for organizing the movement which
he had started. Immense crowds of people came
to these general meetings. One was held at Balby
in Yorkshire in the autumn of 1656. Another
of the same sort was held at Skipton, also in York-
shire, in 1657, and these Skipton general meetings
were held every year for some time. A great
general meeting, " for the whole nation," was held
at Luton in Bedfordshire, "at John Crook's
house," in May of 1658. It lasted three days
and was "attended by three or four thousand
people." The inns were overcrowded and the
visitors overflowed into the nearby towns. "A
glorious meeting it was," Fox says, "and the
everlasting gospel was preached, and many re-
ceived it, ... which gospel brought life and im-
mortality to light in them and shined over all."
Fox set forth his religious truth to the great
concourse of people in two sermons. In the first
90 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX
one he spoke specially to those who had not yet
accepted his teaching and in this he expounded
his ideas about God and Christ and the light in
the soul of man. In the second sermon, he gave
much wise advice to his followers and especially
to those who were accustomed to preach. He
urged them to "dwell in the living, immoveable
Word of God" and to talk about "the things they
lived in," i. e., the things they knew from their
own experience. He told them not to say too
much "take heed of many words," and he kept
saying that everything must be fresh and living
it must "come out of the life and reach the life
in others." He said that the minister who expects
to reach people must always "feel that he stands
in the presence of the Lord God." He warned
them against "customary preaching," i. e., preach-
ing just because it is the custom to have a sermon,
and he told them that they ought always to aim
in their preaching to bring people to such an
experience of God in their own souls that they
could get along without preaching. "Keep
out of all jangling," he said to them, which means,
"do not contend and disagree, but work and think
and speak in love and patience and spiritual
power."
A party of horsemen came to Luton to arrest
Fox at the close of this great meeting, but for some
unexplained reason they did not molest him. He
THE END OF THE COMMONWEALTH ERA 99
was walking in the garden when the soldiers
arrived and they told John Crook, pointing to
Fox, that be was the man they were after. "But,"
Fox says, "the Lord's power so confounded them
that they never came into the garden, but they
went their way in a rage."
One of the most important events in the period
before the Restoration was the planting of Quaker-
ism in the American colonies and in the West
Indian islands. At the Skipton general meeting
of 1658 a document was issued which finely says:
"We have heard of great things done by the mighty
power of God in many nations beyond the seas,
whither He hath called forth many of our dear
brethren and sisters to preach the everlasting
gospel. "
It seems strange to us now that the island of
Barbadoes was the spiritual center in the western
world from which Quakerism spread to the colo-
nies of the Atlantic coast. One of the pioneer
Quaker travelers calls this island "the nursery of
the truth," and we shall see later that George Fox
went to Barbadoes before he came to our shores.
The first "arrivals" were women. Mary Fisher
and Ann Austin reached Barbadoes toward the
end of 1655 and after a successful campaign in the
island they struck out for Boston in the summer
of 1656. About the same time Elizabeth Harris
went to the shores of Chesapeake Bay. Mary
IOO THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX
Fisher and Ann Austin were very quickly expelled
from Puritan Massachusetts and so, too, was a
party of eight Quaker missionaries who arrived
in Boston harbor from London two days after the
two women had been banished. Severe laws were
passed and everybody in Massachusetts now hoped
that they had built the fences so high and tight
around the colony that no more Quakers would
get over them or through them. But it did not
prove to be so!
In the summer of 1657 a party of eleven sailed
from England for America in the little ship,
Woodbouse y owned and captained by a remarkable
Quaker from Holderness, named Robert Fowler,
who dedicated his ship and his life to the service
of the Lord. In his strange ship-log, or narrative
of the journey, Fowler says, "We saw the Lord
leading our vessel, even as it were a man leading a
horse by the head. " Through strange experiences
the little ship was guided on until it reached
New Amsterdam, now New York City. Some
of the Quaker missionaries went to Long Island
where they made many converts to their truth,
and the rest went on in the Woodhouse^ through
the dangerous Hell-gate passage, to Rhode Island.
From here the Quaker travelers scattered out to
places where they had heard of groups prepared
to receive their message. They were especially
successful in Sandwich and in Salem in Massachu-
THE END OF THE COMMONWEALTH ERA IOI
setts, while large groups of Quakers were formed in
Newport, Providence and other towns of Rhode
Island, which the Puritans called "the island of
error." Meantime the Puritan authorities arose
in their might to stop this hated Quaker "inva-
sion." Laws were passed to stamp out the new
religion and to punish with whipping, imprison-
ment or death every Quaker missionary who ap-
peared. But it was not easy to frighten away
Quakers who believed the Lord sent them to
Massachusetts. So they kept on coming and went
up to Boston to "look the bloody laws in the face."
Four Quakers were hung on Boston Common,
three of them visitors from England William
Robinson, Marmaduke Stephenson, and William
Leddra and one a native woman, who at the
time had her home in Rhode Island, Mary Dyer.
It was, however, impossible to stop the "inva-
sion." Soon, in almost every colony along the
coast, Quaker meetings grew up and the followers
of George Fox abounded. In a later chapter we
shall follow the travels of Fox as he went up and
down the Atlantic coast line, visiting the meetings
and establishing the work begun by these valiant
pioneers.
CHAPTER XI
THE PERIOD OF FIERCE PERSECUTION
OLIVER CROMWELL in his heart truly loved lib-
erty and hated persecution. He understood the
spirit of George Fox and apparently appreciated
it. The Quakers were compelled to suffer many
hardships while he was Lord Protector of England
but never because Cromwell personally approved
of that method of dealing with religious opinions.
He had to let many things happen which he would
have had different if he could have followed out
his own ideals. George Fox, however, did not
altogether understand the complicated social and
political conditions which prevailed around him,
and he too severely blamed the Protector for his
course. He welcomed the restoration of the Stuarts
and expected, in the light of the great Declaration
of Breda, that days of peaceful expansion were
now before his beloved Society. Just the opposite
of what he hoped and expected really came to
pass, but here, again, the persecution did not come
from the evil will or spirit of the King. He dis-
approved of it and disliked it, but he felt that,
under the existing conditions, he had to allow
persecution to take its ruthless course.
102
THE PERIOD OF FIERCE PERSECUTION IOJ
Charles II. entered London, as we have seen,
in May, 1660, and about the same time Fox was a
welcome guest at Swarthmore Hall, from which as
a center he was working among the groups of
Friends in the Westmoreland district. Judge
Fell had died in 1658 and Margaret Fell was now
the full mistress of the manor. Her whole heart
was in the work of publishing what Fox and his
friends called "the truth." She was a strong per-
sonality, an able woman, a real leader and she
had become one of the greatest forces in the new
Quaker movement. Before Fox had been many
days in her house four officers came with a warrant
to arrest him and take him away to Lancaster.
They took him first to Ulverston where they
watched him during the night for fear he might
slip away up the chimney and elude them! They
bragged much of their success in capturing the
famous leader, one of the officers saying: "I did
not think that a thousand men could have taken
this man prisoner." Next morning, when some
Friends of the neighborhood, with Margaret Fell
and her daughters, came to see him start off on
his journey to Lancaster, the officers took alarm
and cried out: "Will they rescue him! will they
rescue him!" Fox at once quieted their fears
and showed them the spirit he was made of. The
officers put him on a "little horse" hardly more
than a pony which was led by a halter. They
104 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX
beat the horse and made him kick and run. Where-
upon Fox slipped off the pony's back and protested
against the abuse of the dumb creature. The odd
procession finally covered the fourteen miles to
Lancaster and as the officers marched into the
city with their prisoner he, sitting on his little
horse, was "moved to sing praises unto the Lord
in His triumphing power over all." Multitudes
of people in Lancaster crowded the streets to see
the prisoner go by and they cried out: "Look at
his eyes ! Look at his eyes ! "
He was examined before Justice Porter, who
sternly asked him "why he came down into the
country at this troublesome time?" which shows
that they feared that Fox was trying to foment a
rebellion! He replied, "I come to visit my breth-
ren." " But you have great meetings up and down
the country," the justice said. "Yes we have
great meetings," answered Fox, "but they are
peaceable and we are a peaceable people." The
justice refused to let Fox see a copy of the warrant
and charged him with being "a disturber of the
nation," "an enemy of the king," a dangerous
man who was "endeavoring to raise a new war
and imbrue the nation in blood again." He was
committed to the "Dark House," a miserable
dungeon in Lancaster Castle, where he was kept a
close prisoner, badly treated, threatened with hang-
ing and given no chance to defend himself legally.
THE PERIOD OF FIERCE PERSECUTION 105
Margaret Fell, meantime, went up to London
with a strong protest against the injustice com-
mitted against her friend. The King ordered that
Fox be brought up to London for trial, before the
Court of the King's Bench. Justice Porter went
to London to make a stand against his prisoner,
but, as he had a very bad record with which to
face the Stuart king and his cavaliers, he soon
slunk away and hurried back home. While the
trial was proceeding, "a Gentleman of the Bed-
chamber named Marsh," [Richard Marche] came
to the three judges who were conducting the trial
and told them that it was the King's pleasure that
"Fox should be set at liberty, seeing that no ac-
cuser came up against him." He was released on
October 25th, having been arrested on June 3rd.
An unfortunate outbreak of the "Fifth Mon-
archy Men" occurred in London, January 6th,
1 66 1, which threw the whole city into commotion
and fear. Fox was at this time in serious danger
since the police and soldiers suspected almost
everybody and acted without judgment or re-
straint. Once more "the Gentleman of the Bed-
chamber, Esquire Marsh" came to his rescue
and protected him until the sudden storm was
over. Throughout the whole country the excite-
ment spread and the Quakers were in many places
confused with the unbalanced Fifth Monarchy
people who were being everywhere hunted out.
IO6 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX
The king, however, at this period exercised his
royal power in favor of Friends in many instances.
It was at this time that, through the intercession
of Edward Burrough, he sent his mandate to the
magistrates in Massachusetts and ordered them
to release all Quakers imprisoned in that colony.
The king sent his commands by the hand of Samuel
Shattuck, who, as a Quaker, had been banished
on pain of death from the colony! It was too late
to save Mary Dyer, William Robinson, Marma-
duke Stephenson and William Leddra. The first
three had been executed while Fox was in prison
in Lancaster and he tells us that he had "a per-
fect sense of their sufferings at the time," as though,
he says, " the halter had been about my own neck."
But these favors toward the Quakers were only
temporary. New troubles of a very serious sort
now began to arise and every person who accepted
the position of Fox was tested as by fire.
'The Act of Uniformity was passed in 1662 by
which all clergymen were compelled to declare their
assent and consent to everything contained in the
Book of Common Prayer of the English Church.
Under this Act about two thousand Puritan min-
isters, who refused to give their "assent and con-
sent" were ejected from their churches. This
terrible Act did not directly affect Fox and his
followers, but it showed very plainly what treat-
ment was likely to be meted out to those who did
THE PERIOD OF FIERCE PERSECUTION IOJ
not conform in every particular to the established
church.
Another Act followed this one in 1664, called
the Conventicle Act. By this Act it became a
crime for more than five persons to hold a meeting
together in any place, if the meeting were not in
conformity with the Church of England. The
penalty for the first offense was 5 (twenty-five
dollars) or three months' imprisonment; for the
second offense 10 (fifty dollars) or six months'
imprisonment; for the third offense the penalty
was banishment to some foreign plantation, or
the payment of 100 (five hundred dollars) for
redemption. This Conventicle Act struck straight
at the life of the Quaker meeting. If more than
five Friends met to worship God they were all
likely to be arrested and fined, and as Friends
always refused to pay such fines, they were sure
to be thrust into the dreadful prisons of the period.
There was still another law which gave the
Quakers almost as much trouble as did the Con-
venticle Act. This was a law, passed in May,
1662, providing that all persons who refused to
take an oath should have a similar series of fines
or imprisonment to those which were imposed
upon persons who violated the Conventicle Act.
Friends had a profound conscientious objection
to taking any form of oath. They believed that
Christ forbade swearing and they insisted that
IO8 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX
a Christian ought always to speak the truth
without taking an oath. But every time a Friend
was brought into court on any charge, it was
always easy to catch him by asking him to take
an oath. He would never do it and then, under this
law of 1662, his punishment followed. This Law
of May, 1662, also made it an offense for five or
more Quakers to assemble together in a religious
meeting not authorized by law.
Friends everywhere defied the Conventicle Act.
They went on with their meetings as though noth-
ing had happened. The officers found it very
difficult to deal with these strange people who
showed no fear of prisons and who put their
consciences above everything else on earth. The
officers would break in on a quiet meeting, but
they could not decide who should be arrested.
There was no clergyman who represented the
congregation. Everybody was on the same dem-
ocratic level. If they carried away all the men
then the women went right on with the meeting.
In at least one case, in the meeting at Reading,
when the officers carried away both the men and
the women, the children gathered and held the
meeting without any grown-up people to direct
them. It was pretty hard to conquer or stamp
out a movement possessed and guided by a spirit
like that.
It was, however, a terrible ordeal. "Our
THE PERIOD OF FIERCE PERSECUTION 109
meetings are daily broken up," Fox writes, "by
men with clubs and arms, though we meet peace-
ably according to the practice of God's people
in primitive times, and our friends are thrown
into waters and trod upon, till the very blood
gushes out of them, the number of which abuses
can hardly be uttered." During the first two
years of the Restoration period more than three
thousand Friends were thrown into prison and
when the severer laws came into operation the
number mounted very much higher and many
of those who went away to prison never came
home again to their families, for prisons then were
deadly places and often like "pest houses."
It was at this time that George Fox underwent
his longest imprisonment. When he was most
needed to help his Friends bear the stress and
strain of the great persecution he was separated
from them and was in a dungeon from which,
a part of the time at least, it looked as though he
might never come out. In the autumn of 1663
Fox was in the northern counties and after "a
precious meeting" at Cartmel, he came across
the Sands to Swarthmore Hall, where he heard
that Colonel Kirkby, whom Fox calls Kirby, of
Kirkby Hall, a Member of Parliament and a strong
supporter of the Stuarts, was hunting for him
and was determined to have him arrested. He
was "moved of the Lord" to go straight to Kirkby
I IO THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX
Hall and to ask the Colonel what he wanted of him !
The next morning after the "moving" came to
him Fox started off for Kirkby Hall which was
five miles away. He found the Flemings who were
kinsmen of the Kirkbys and many other gentry
of the neighborhood assembled in the Hall, to
take leave of Colonel Kirkby who was starting
for London to attend Parliament. Fox addressed
him in his usual straightforward manner: "I came
to visit thee, to know what thou hast to say
to me and to see whether thou hast anything
against me." The Colonel was evidently some-
what embarrassed and said in the presence of all
his guests: "As I am a gentleman I have nothing
against you. But Mistress Fell must not keep
[i. e., hold] great meetings in her house, for they are
contrary to the Act." Fox replied: "That Act
does not apply to us but it is meant for those who
meet to plot and contrive and raise insurrection
against the king, whereas we are no such people.
Thou knowest that those who meet at Margaret
Fell's house are thy neighbors and are a peaceable
people." The Colonel, after more friendly con-
versation, gave Fox his hand and said: "I have
nothing against you." He went on to his duties
in London and his visitor returned to Swarthmore
Hall.
A short time after this the justices and deputy
lieutenants of the district had a private meeting
THE PERIOD OF PERSECUTION FIERCE III
in Holker Hall where Justice Preston lived. They
decided at this meeting to arrest Fox. He heard
overnight of their decision and of their plans,
and he might easily have escaped, but that was
not his way. He says: "I considered that, as
there was the noise of a plot in the north, if I
should go away they might fall upon Friends;
but if I gave up myself to be taken, it might stop
them and Friends should escape the better. So
I gave up to be taken, and prepared myself for
their coming."
Next day an officer came with sword and pistols,
to take him. He was much surprised to find that
Fox knew all about the proposed arrest and might
have been "forty miles away," if he had cared to
escape. He quietly said, "I am ready to go," and,
accompanied by Margaret Fell, he went with the
officer to Holker Hall to meet his accusers.
CHAPTER XII
THREE YEARS IN CASTLES
THE great scene in Holker Hall has been painted
by a modern artist. Three justices "examined"
the Quaker prisoner, endeavoring in vain to un-
earth some ground on which to condemn him.
He was more than their match, however, and asked
them questions which they could not answer.
No sign of any connection with a plot could be
fixed upon him and his entire testimony was as
clear as a bell: "We stand," he said, "for all good
government."
When no ground of condemnation could be
discovered, the justices, who were determined
to make a show of their loyalty to the new king
and were resolved to commit Fox to prison on
some charge, decided to catch him with the de-
mand for an oath. " Bring the Book [the Bible] ",
one of them cried, " and put the oaths of allegiance
and supremacy to him." This justice himself was
a Roman Catholic and, as the prisoner slyly sug-
gested, had never taken the oath of allegiance to
the Protestant king who in the oath had to be
recognized as supreme head of the Church. "What
church dost thou belong to?" Fox asked him.
112
THREE YEARS IN CASTLES
"Where wast thou in Oliver's days and what didst
thou do then for King Charles?"
The oath was tendered to Fox and he simply
declared that he could take no oath. The justices
dismissed him, only making him -promise to come
to the next court sessions in Lancaster. Mean-
time he was allowed to return to Swarthmore
Hall. When the court sessions came in January,
1664, Fox appeared, according to his promise,
at Lancaster, and stood before the court with his
hat on his head and said, "Peace be among you."
There was much discussion about his hat, but
finally he was allowed to wear it unmolested. Once
more the justices examined him about a possible
plot, but found no evidence. Then, having no
other way to condemn him, they tendered the
oath again. Fox answered: "I cannot take any
oath at all because Christ and the apostles have
forbidden it. I have never taken an oath in my
life." Whereupon he was committed to prison
"for refusing to swear." He was kept in confine-
ment in Lancaster Castle until the court assizes,
three months later.
At the assizes in March, 1664, he was asked
again if he would take the oath of allegiance and
once more he stated his reasons with directness
and force, but refused. The discussions with
the justices were very amusing and showed Fox's
skill in handling his case, but whenever he got
114 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX
them in a close place they would retort, "Will you
take the oath?" At length he was re-committed
to his prison until the next assizes. At the same
time Margaret Fell, for the same reason, was im-
prisoned in Lancaster jail. At the August as-
sizes, Fox once more was brought into court.
The oath was again tendered, and again refused.
The jury, because of Fox's refusal to take the oath,
found him guilty, and while waiting for his sen-
tence, he requested that the judge should send
some one to see the vile prison in which he was
being kept. Some of the justices, with Colonel
Kirkby, went to look at the prison-dungeon.
"When they came," Fox says, "they hardly durst
go in, the floor was so bad and dangerous and the
place was so open to wind and rain. Some that
came up said, 'Sure it was a Jakes-house."'
The next day Fox skillfully showed that the
writ of indictment under which he was being
sentenced was full of errors. The court admitted
it, and Fox would have escaped sentence had not
the judge decided to hold him again by the de-
mand for an oath. Fox says: "I looked him in
the face and the witness of God started up in him
and made him blush when he looked at me, for
he saw that I saw him." He was commanded
back to his dungeon until the next assizes, the
order to the jailer being that he should have close
solitary confinement.
THREE YEARS IN CASTLES
"Then," Fox says, "I was put into a tower,
where the smoke of the other prisoners came
up so thick, that it stood as dew upon the walls,
and sometimes it was so thick that I could hardly
see the candle when it burned; and I being locked
under three locks, the under-jailer, when the smoke
was great, would hardly be persuaded to come
up to unlock one of the uppermost doors, for
fear of the smoke, so that I was almost smothered.
Besides, it rained in upon my bed, and many times,
when I went to stop out the rain in the cold
winter season, my shirt was wet through with
the rain that came in upon me, while I was labor-
ing to stop it out. And the place being high and
open to the wind, sometimes as fast as I stopped
it, the wind blew it out again. In this manner
did I lie, all that long cold winter, till the next
assize; in which time I was so starved with cold
and rain, that my body was greatly swelled, and
my limbs much benumbed."
At the March assizes in 1665, he went through
the same sort of absurd trial again. Once more
he found serious errors in the indictment, but
was instantly held up by the call for an oath,
which he could not take. In a moment of anger the
judge ordered him removed from court and then
sentence was pronounced on him in his absence
which was contrary to the law. It was a terrible
sentence of prcemunire. This was an ancient
Il6 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX
penalty contrived first by the Plantagenet kings
for dealing with persons whom they wished to
destroy. It had been revived in the period of the
Reformation for disposing of persons who held a
form of religion not in conformity with the ruling
power. Now, under Charles II., it was brought in
again to overwhelm those who refused the oath
of allegiance and supremacy. By the penalty of
prcemunire the person sentenced was made an
outlaw, had all his property confiscated, and was
subject to perpetual imprisonment, or until the
king issued a pardon. It was now pronounced
on both George Fox and Margaret Fell, though
the former being absent from court did not know
what a terrible sentence had been passed upon him.
Fourteen months had passed since his arrest.
He had spent most of the time in an appalling
dungeon. He was guilty of no crime. He was
pure in heart, innocent of all plots, loyal to the
king, and punished only because he could not do
what he believed the very Bible, on which he
was asked to swear, told him not to do. He grew
very weak and worn from his close confinement
under such unsanitary conditions, but still he
worked on with his pen and issued many papers
and tracts from his castle-dungeon. Colonel
Kirkby and the other justices were eager to get
rid of him and wanted him removed from their
jurisdiction. There was talk of sending him
THREE YEARS IN CASTLES
"beyond seas," but finally an order was secured
to transfer him to a remote castle in another part
of England. He was brought out of his confine-
ment one day in April, 1665, without knowing
his destination. He was too weak to walk. He
was carried by the men and placed on horseback
and hurried away through the gazing crowds of
Lancaster. It was a strange journey across Eng-
land. A white, haggard man, in filthy, ill-smelling
clothes, on a horse, which "the wicked jailer"
would occasionally whip to make him skip and
leap, riding from a castle in Lancaster to his new
castle by the sea, in Scarborough. There was an
escort of soldiers riding beside him, for there was
"a great fear" that the prisoner might try to
escape or be rescued by his dangerous friends!
At length, fainting and exhausted, Fox reached
his castle by the sea, and found himself once more
in a prison cell where the rain came in upon him,
and which, like the old one in Lancaster, "smoked
exceedingly and was very offensive." In fact
the smoke was so thick in the little room that
Fox playfully told Sir Jordan Crosslands, the
governor of the castle, who was a Roman Catholic,
that he had lodged his prisoner in a kind of pur-
gatory here on earth.
Fox spent fifty shillings to improve his cell,
to stop the rain from coming in and to keep the
smoke out, and he had succeeded in getting the
Il8 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX
place more decent for habitation when he was
unexpectedly moved to another room, which
turned out to be worse than his original one had
been. This new room was a terrible place for a
weak, ill, prison-worn man to live in. His own
description of it is very graphic and will make the
reader vividly realize the kind of life the poor,
long-suffering man had in this famous castle:
"When I had been at that charge, and made
it somewhat tolerable, they removed me into a
worse room, where I had neither chimney nor
fire-hearth. This being to the sea-side and lying
much open, the wind drove in the rain forcibly,
so that the water came over my bed, and ran about
the room, that I was fain to skim it up with a
platter. And when my clothes were wet, I had
no fire to dry them; so that my body was benumbed
with cold, and my fingers swelled, that one was
grown as big as two. Though I was at some charge
in this room also, I could not keep out the wind
and rain. Besides they would suffer few Friends
to come to me, and many times not any, no, not
so much as to bring me a little food; but I was
forced for the first quarter to hire one, not a
Friend, to bring me necessaries. Sometimes the
soldiers would take it from her, and she would
scuffle with them for it. Afterwards I hired a
soldier to bring me water and bread, and something
to make a fire of, when I was in a room where a
THREE YEARS IN CASTLES 119
fire could be made. Commonly a threepenny
loaf served me three weeks, and sometimes longer,
and most of my drink was water with wormwood
steeped or bruised in it. ... Inasmuch as they
kept me so very strait, not giving liberty for
Friends to come to me, I spoke to the keepers
of the castle to this effect: 'I did not know till
I was removed from Lancaster castle, and brought
prisoner to this castle of Scarbro, that I was con-
victed of a praemunire; for the judge did not
give sentence upon me at the assizes in open court.
But seeing I am now a prisoner here, if I may not
have my liberty, let my friends and acquaintances
have their liberty to come and visit me, as Paul's
friends had among the Romans, who were not
Christians but Heathens. For Paul's friends
had their liberty; all that would, might come to
him, and he had his liberty to preach to them in
his hired house; but I cannot have liberty to go
into the town, nor for my friends to come to me
here. So you that go under the name of Christians,
are worse in this respect than those Heathens
were.'"
Although the officials of the castle would not
allow any Friends to visit the prisoner and he
was as "a man buried alive," they did permit
other people to come and either gaze upon him
or dispute with him. A number of Roman Cath-
olics, who were friends of the governor, came,
I2O THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX
out of curiosity, to discuss religion with him and he
showed considerable skill and humor in his keen
questions and answers with them. It must have
been a great relief and refreshment to be able to
use his pent up mind on these subjects which in-
terested him more than anything else in the world
did. He also had debates with Presbyterians,
with knights, noble ladies, priests and laymen,
and these visits not only broke the dreary monot-
ony of his prison life; they enabled him to feel
that, like St. Paul in Rome, he was spreading his
truth, even while he suffered for it.
One of the most interesting of all his visitors
was Dr. Cradock, who brought with him three
clergymen and a titled lady. They debated at
length about the taking of oaths, going over the
usual Bible texts for argument. Then Fox turned
the tables on the divinity doctor by asking him
why his church was now excommunicating Friends
when it had done nothing to minister to the spirit-
ual condition of England at the time when Friends
arose. "We might have turned Turks or Jews,"
Fox told him, "for any help we had from you."
"Now," he added, "you have put us out of your
church before you have got us into it and before
you taught us to know your principles!"
At first Sir Jordan Grasslands had taken little
interest in his Quaker prisoner, but in the course
of time he came to realize what an unusual inmate
THREE YEARS IN CASTLES 121
of his castle George Fox really was. Meantime
some trouble came upon the governor of the
castle which made him more serious and, Fox says,
"more friendly." During the earlier period of
the imprisonment at Scarborough the officers
tried to scare Fox with dire threats. They told
him that he was likely soon to be "hanged over
the wall." The deputy-governor informed him
that the king was holding him at Scarborough as
a hostage, and that if there should be any popular
uprising anywhere in the nation, Fox was to be
"hung over the wall to keep the people down."
On one particular occasion, when a marriage was
being performed at Scarborough by Roman Cath-
olic ceremony, the prison officials intimated to
Fox that this would probably be a good time to
have his hanging come off. "I am all ready for
it," was the brave man's answer. "I have never
feared death nor suffering in my life. I am an
innocent, peaceable man, free from all plots and
uprisings. I have always sought the good of all
men. Bring out your gallows. "
But during the last period of the imprisonment
the governor grew kinder and more tender. He
discovered the spirit of Fox and was ready to
help him to get his freedom. He was a Member of
Parliament and on one of his visits to London he
spoke to " Esquire Marsh," of whom we have heard
before, and told him how Fox was held all these
122 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX
years in prison. "I would go a hundred miles
barefoot to secure his liberty," was "Marsh's" en-
thusiastic response. Affairs, however, moved
slowly. England was at war with Holland, and
it is always easy to forget and overlook a lone man
far away in a prison. But Fox's Friends in London
did not forget him. Two of them, who had public
influence, drew up an account of what he had
suffered in his two castle imprisonments and car-
ried the report to "Esquire Marsh," who took it to
"the master of requests." The latter procured
from the king an order to release Fox from his
castle prison. The order declared that the king
was convinced that George Fox was "a man
principled against plotting and righting," and was
always more ready to discover plots than to make
them, and that, therefore, it was the royal pleasure
that he should be set free. As soon as the order
was brought by a devoted Friend to Sir Jordan
Crosslands he issued the following passport:
"Permit the bearer hereof, George Fox, late a
prisoner here, and now discharged by His Majes-
ty's order, quietly to pass about his lawful occa-
sions, without any molestation."
The discharge was dated September 1st, 1666,
and closed an imprisonment which had begun
January nth, 1664, so that it lacked about three
months of being three years long. The feeling
of the castle governor toward his charge was
THREE YEARS IN CASTLES
kind and friendly and Fox had come to respect
his knightly keeper. He proposed to make a
present to Sir Jordan, but the latter refused to
receive anything, saying: "I will do you and
your friends all the good I can, and I will never
do you any hurt." "He continued loving,"
Fox says, " to his dying day. " The officers of the
castle, too, had felt the spirit and power of the
man under their care and formed a high opinion
of him. "He was as stiff as a tree," they said,
"and as pure as a bell; for we could never bow
him."
CHAPTER XIII
UNITED IN THE IMMORTAL SEED
WHILE George Fox was standing the universe
in Scarborough castle, London was suffering from
a fearful plague that carried away a large part of
the population, and the day after he was released
from his prison the great fire of 1666 swept over
the city, destroying thirteen thousand houses. Fox
believed that he had foreseen this calamity. "As
I was walking in my chamber" [apparently while
he was in Lancaster castle], he says, "with my
eye to the Lord, I saw the angel of the Lord with
a glittering drawn sword stretched southward,
as though the court had been all on fire."
As soon as he was once more a free man he set
out immediately on a strenuous religious tour
of the counties, having everywhere "large and
blessed meetings." But though he seemed to
have abnormal strength for a person who had
just had three years of dungeon life, he was,
nevertheless, now an aged and somewhat broken
man. In years he was only forty-two and he had
still almost twenty-four years of life before him,
but the awful prisons had left their mark upon his
body and he never again possessed the iron con-
124
UNITED IN THE IMMORTAL SEED 125
stitution which was his before the jails had wasted
him. "My joints and my body," he writes after
quite a period of travel, "were so stiff and be-
numbed that I could hardly get on my horse or
bend my joints; nor could I well bear to be near
the fire or eat warm meat, I had been kept so
long from it." A few years later he passed through
a long and serious illness at Enfield, from which
his friends never expected to see him recover,
and on his voyage to America he was desperately
ill. He says of this illness: "The many hurts
and bruises I had formerly received, and the in-
firmities I had contracted in England by extreme
cold and hardships that I had undergone in many
long and sore imprisonments, returned upon me
at sea." He had also a long period of great ill-
ness and physical weakness after landing in Bar-
badoes, "with much pain," he says, "in my bones,
joints and my whole body, so that I could hardly
get any rest." But his unconquerable spirit
dominated his body and in spite of his bruises
and weaknesses he made it go on serving his
strong will and purpose.
In this later period of his ministry Fox was re-
warded by the convincement of some remarkable
men who brought new distinction and power to
the Society which he had founded. The most
famous of them all was William Penn, the son of
Admiral Penn. As the founder of the great middle
126 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX
colony and state which now bears his name, he
has won a place of marked distinction in American
history. His life is full of romance and daring
as well as suffering, and he will always be cele-
brated for his defense of personal liberty at home
and for his "holy experiment" in the Western
colony. Robert Barclay of Scotland was another
shining light in the Quaker group. Scholar and
saint, he brought gifts which no other Friends
possessed and it fell to his lot to write the great
defense of the Quaker faith which every Friend
read for two centuries, Barclay's Apology. Isaac
Penington, mystic and saint, beautiful soul and
gifted writer, was won to the cause before Fox
went to his two castles. At Swannington meeting
in 1658 he found God and felt the healing drop
into his soul from under God's wings, and from
that time until his death he used his pen and tongue
to advance the truth which his own soul had dis-
covered. Thomas Ellwood, John Milton's secre-
tary, another highly gifted man, at great sacri-
fice, threw in his lot with the followers of Fox in
1660. Like their leader, they all suffered for their
faith and they all gave the best they had in them
for the truth which their souls had found.
During the long silent stretches of his imprison-
ment Fox had evidently been meditating deeply
and thinking much of the future of the Society
which had grown up so rapidly under his preach-
UNITED IN THE IMMORTAL SEED I1J
ing. There were many signs of weakness in it and
lack of organization. He came out of prison with
a resolve to prepare the Society for its great tasks
in the world and to organize it more thoroughly
while he was still with his Friends and had the
strength and freedom to do it. He found Friends
who were careless and disorderly and he felt that
much more oversight of the members was needed.
He recommended that monthly meetings should
be established to take care of those who were
poor and in need; to look after those who were
suffering for their faith; to keep records of births
and deaths and marriages and to have a careful
oversight over the lives of the membership. There
were some Friends who stoutly disapproved of so
much system and method. They wanted every-
thing left free for the individuals to decide accord-
ing to their own light. These opposers of regula-
tion and discipline gave Fox a vast amount of
trouble and anxiety. He could stand persecution
and he could face the mob and the prison, but it
was much harder to endure the attacks and com-
plaints and criticisms of his own followers. The
rest of his life was to be largely occupied with
this great work of organization and with smooth-
ing differences and with bringing order out of
chaos and disorder. It is not so interesting to
read about as the victorious early campaigns
through the counties, but it took even more pa-
128 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX
tience and grace and wisdom, and it revealed in a
new way the greatness of George Fox as a leader.
He saw, too, at this time, the great importance of
education and the training of the mind. He now
advised the establishment of schools for boys and
girls, who were to be taught "whatsoever things
were civil and useful in the creation"!
After a successful religious journey in Ireland,
where he had "large and precious meetings,"
and where he gathered "a good, weighty and true
people, sensible of the power of the Lord God
and tender of His truth," he took one of the most
interesting steps of his life. He joined himself
in marriage with his dear friend and helper,
Margaret Fell. She had been imprisoned at Lan-
caster with George Fox and after fourteen months
of jail she had been sentenced under the statute of
prcemunire in 1665, and her imprisonment had
lasted, with possibly slight breaks of freedom,
until June, 1668. Even then, though temporarily
released, the sentence still hung over her and made
her a prison victim for yet many more years.
While Fox was in Ireland she was using her joy-
ous freedom in visiting the prisons where other
Friends through the nation were suffering. She
had taken her youngest daughter, Rachel, to
the new girls' school at Shacklewell to learn every-
thing "useful in the creation" and she was on a
visit to her daughter Isabel who had married
UNITED IN THE IMMORTAL SEED 129
William Yeamans of Bristol. Here in Bristol
George Fox found her and won her as his true and
loyal wife. His own account of how it happened
is quaint and charming. He says:
"I had seen from the Lord a considerable time
before, that I should take Margaret Fell to be my
wife. And when I first mentioned it to her, she
felt the answer of Life from God thereunto. But
though the Lord had opened this thing to me, yet
I had not received a command from the Lord, for
the accomplishment of it then. Wherefore I let
the thing rest, and went on in the work and service
of the Lord as before, according as he led me;
travelling up and down in this nation and through
Ireland. But now being at Bristol, and finding
Margaret Fell there, it opened in me from the
Lord that the thing should be accomplished.
After we had discoursed the matter together, I
told her, if she also was satisfied with the ac-
complishment of it now, she should first send for
her children; which she did. When the rest of
her daughters were come, I asked both them and
her sons in law, if they had anything against it,
or for it; and they all severally expressed their
satisfaction therein. Then I asked Margaret,
if she had fulfilled and performed her husband's
will to her children. She replied, "the children
knew that." Whereupon I asked them, whether,
if their mother married, they should not lose by
THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX
it. And I asked Margaret, whether she had done
anything in lieu of it, which might answer it to
the children ? [All of which means, in plain Eng-
lish, that she had made arrangements and pro-
vision so that her children would not lose any of
their rightful property if their mother married
George Fox.] The children said, that she had
answered it to them, and desired me to speak no
more of it. I told them I was plain and would
have all things done plainly; for I sought not any
outward advantage to myself. So after I had thus
acquainted the children with it, our intention of
marriage was laid before Friends, both privately
and publicly, to their full satisfaction, many of
whom gave testimony thereunto that it was of
God. Afterwards, a meeting being appointed for
the accomplishment thereof, in the meetinghouse
at Broad-Mead in Bristol, we took each other, the
Lord joining us together in the honourable mar-
riage, in the everlasting covenant and immortal
Seed of life. In the sense whereof, living and
weighty testimonies were borne thereunto by
Friends, in the movings of the heavenly power
which united us together. Then was a certificate
relating both to the proceedings and the mar-
riage, openly read, and signed by the relations, and
by most of the ancient Friends of that city, besides
many others from divers parts of the nation."
This marriage, which they both believed was
UNITED IN THE IMMORTAL SEED IJI
"in the immortal Seed of life" i. e., according to
the divine will and in unity with the eternal spirit
of Jesus Christ proved to be a very beautiful
and happy one. For some years after they were
thus united George Fox and his wife saw almost
nothing of one another, but they were very closely
joined together in sincere love through all this
period of hard separation. Fox wrote many letters
to his wife. They are brief, quaint, odd love let-
ters, but they have the deep, true note of real affec-
tion. They generally begin : " My dear Heart in the
Truth and Life that changeth not," and they close
with some such phrase as this: "So no more, but
my love in the Seed and Life that changeth not."
The reason they were so much separated was
that Margaret Fox was taken back to prison
almost at once after the marriage was accom-
plished and Fox not very much later took an ex-
tensive journey overseas. They had a week to-
gether in Bristol after they were united "in the
immortal Seed of Life." After they traveled
together a short distance they took leave of
one another and parted to their "several serv-
ices." "Margaret returned homewards to the
north," Fox says, "and I passed on in the work
of the Lord as before" a week was all he could
spare of the precious time which belonged to the
Lord's work. Fox had expected to join his wife
in Leicestershire perhaps at his old home at
THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX
Fenny Drayton but instead of coming south
to meet him, as he asked her to do, she was "haled
out of her house to Lancaster prison again, by
an order obtained from the king and council, to
fetch her back to prison upon the old prcemunire"
It looks as though Margaret Fox's son George,
who was strongly opposed to the marriage with
George Fox, may have had something to do with
bringing about the arrest and reimprisonment of
his mother under ihzprcemunire. He did not share
his sisters' love of Fox and he plainly plotted in
London to bring the husband and wife into trouble.
Fox wrote, "I am informed he [George Fell] hath
been with Kirkby, Monk and such-like persons;
and I understand his intent is to have Swarth-
more. . . . The agreement thou made with him,
he says, signifies nothing, thou being a prisoner."
In any case, whether by unnatural intrigue, or
through general opposition to the Quakers, this
good woman, now fifty-five years old, almost im-
mediately after her marriage, was hurried away
from home to prison, where she was lodged from
March, 1670, to April, 1671.
The Conventicle Act was renewed in 1670 with
fresh vigor and the danger of arrest was greatly
increased. This period was one of intense suffer-
ing for Friends and they never knew when they
went to meeting on Sunday morning "First-
day," they called it whether they would come
UNITED IN THE IMMORTAL SEED
back again to their homes, or whether, as was more
likely, they would be arrested and dragged away
to prison, perhaps never to come home again. The
Sunday after the new Act came into force Fox
says: "I went to Grace-Church Street [meeting]
where I expected the storm was most likely to
begin." While Fox was preaching in the meeting,
the constable with his soldiers came and pulled
him down as he said, "Blessed are the peace-
makers." He was put in charge of the soldiers
and the officer said to him, "You are the man I
was looking for." After an examination Fox and
the Friends who had been arrested with him were
set at liberty. His Friends asked him where he
was going now: "Why," he said, "I am going
back to the meeting," and sure enough he went
straight to Grace-Church Street! The meeting
was already over and Fox went out to discover
how the day had gone. "A glorious time it was,"
he says, " for the Lord's power came over all, and
His everlasting truth got renown." The account
continues: "As fast as some that were speaking
were taken down [by the officers] others were
moved of the Lord to stand up and speak; to
the admiration of the people."
Under the strain of this great persecution upon
his followers, Fox had a serious return of his old
nervous troubles. "A great weight and oppres-
sion," he says, "fell upon my spirit." "I was
THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX
hardly able to ride upon my horse." "I was much
spent, being so extremely laden and burdened
with the world's spirits, that my life was oppressed
under them." "I lay exceeding weak, and at
last lost both hearing and sight." "Under great
sufferings and travails, sorrows and oppressions,
I lay several weeks, whereby I was brought so
low and weak in body that few thought I could
live." Gradually life and health and strength
came back to him. At first he "recovered a little
glimmering sight" and then, little by little, both
sight and hearing returned and finally "the
Lord's power," he says, "upheld me and enabled
me to declare His eternal word of Life."
One of the first things he did after his recovery
was to take up measures to secure the release of
his wife from prison. He sent Martha Fisher and
another woman to King Charles II. to plead for
Margaret Fox's liberty. "They went in faith
and in the Lord's power," Fox says, and they were
successful. The king granted a discharge under
his broad seal and cleared her and her estate from
the prcemunire.
Meantime Fox felt it "laid upon him by the
Lord to go beyond seas to visit America." He
wrote to his wife his "dear Heart" that she
was at last a free woman and that she should
"hasten to London," to see him off for America,
"because the ship was then fitting for the voyage."
UNITED IN THE IMMORTAL SEED 135
The ship was a yacht named the Industry. Ac-
companied by his wife and several Friends he
went to Gravesend, on the I2th of August, 1671,
to go forth on his momentous journey. A large
group of Friends were to go with him to America
as companions in the ministry. They were Wil-
liam Edmundson, Thomas Briggs, John Rous,
John Stubbs, Solomon Eccles, James Lancaster,
John Cartwright, Robert Widders, George Pat-
tison, John Hull, Elizabeth Hooton and Elizabeth
Miers. One wonders why Margaret Fox did not
go too, but no doubt there was good reason why
she remained behind in England. She went on
with him as far as Deal, where they separated not
to meet again for many months and even years.
The ship was a leaky craft so that both seamen
and passengers, of whom there were fifty, had to
man the pumps both day and night. One day,
we hope it was the worst one, she sucked in sixteen
inches of water in two hours' time. They had a
very close escape from a "Sallee man of war,"
that is a Moorish pirate ship, and Fox always
thought that the escape was a miraculous deliver-
ance. He himself, as has already been said, was
desperately ill on the voyage, though he did not
suffer at all from seasickness. The passage took
seven weeks, and, late in the evening of September
third, the party landed on the island of Barbadoes
with Fox still a very ill man.
CHAPTER XIV
VISITING THE "SEED" IN AMERICA
IT seems likely that George Fox had an attack
of what would now be called rheumatic fever on
the ship and during the early period of his stay
in Barbadoes. There was much work to be done
in the island but he could do very little. He could
neither walk nor ride. The wickedness on the
island depressed him and lay "as a weight and
load" upon him. Gradually he began to recover
and the fervor and energy of his spirit returned.
He visited the governor of the island to whom he
afterwards wrote a famous letter, explaining and
interpreting his religious faith. Large meetings
were held and many lives were reached with the
message of Fox and his Friends.
After three months of activity in Barbadoes
he crossed over to Jamaica and had much success-
ful service in the great land that Oliver Cromwell
had recently added to the colonial possessions of
England. Here Elizabeth Hooton died, departing
"in peace like a lamb, bearing testimony to truth
at her departure." Seven weeks were spent in
Jamaica and then Fox sailed, with most of his
group of companions, for Maryland. It proved
136
VISITING THE SEED IN AMERICA 137
to be a very difficult, slow and dangerous passage.
The ship often seemed ready to sink and the tack-
ling was stripped off by the awful violence of the
storm. It took over six weeks to make the passage
from Jamaica to the coast of Maryland, and when
they entered Patuxent River, safe and sound,
they praised the Lord "whose power hath do-
minion over all, whom the winds and the seas
obey."
John Burnyeat, a remarkable Quaker apostle,
who traveled extensively among the American
Friends, had preceded Fox to Maryland and had
appointed a general meeting for Friends in that
colony. It began just as the party from Jamaica
arrived. Great throngs of people came to it,
"some of considerable quality in the world's
account," and the meeting lasted four days.
Fox was now in pretty good health and vigor.
Travel by boat and horseback was hard and tax-
ing, but he stood it finely. " Blessed be the Lord,"
he says, "I was preserved from taking hurt."
Everywhere he went in America one of his first
interests was to visit the Indians and to give his
message to them. "It was upon me from the
Lord," he says, "to send to the Indian emperor
and his kings to come to the meeting. The em-
peror [head chief] came and was at it; but his
kings, lying further off, could not reach in time;
yet they came after with their cockarooses [i. e.,
138 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX
head men]. I had in the evening two good op-
portunities with them; they heard the word of the
Lord willingly and confessed to it. They carried
themselves very courteously and lovingly."
Having pretty well covered the Maryland ter-
ritory, Fox started off northward on a hard and
difficult journey to New England. It was made
on horseback and by boats, most of the way being
through thick forests. The crossing of the Del-
aware was attended with "great danger." They
had Indian guides who could generally speak
a little English and were "very loving." New
Jersey was a wilderness country, where, Fox says,
"we travelled a whole day together without
seeing man or woman, house or dwelling-place."
A great meeting, called the Half Year's Meeting,
was about to be held at this time at Oyster Bay,
on Long Island, where there were many Friends.
Fox attended this meeting, which lasted four
days, like the one in Maryland, and it was "of
great service to the truth." Having traversed
Long Island he sailed for Newport where he pro-
posed to attend the New England Yearly Meeting.
Friends came to this meeting from all parts of
New England, from as far east as Dover, in the
colony of New Hampshire. Newport itself was
a great Quaker center. Nicholas Easton, a prom-
inent Quaker, the founder of Newport, was then
governor of Rhode Island. George Fox stayed at
VISITING THE SEED IN AMERICA 139
his house, though we may be pretty sure that he
had to visit many other homes besides in this
famous Quaker city. The Yearly Meeting lasted
six days and was attended by multitudes of
Friends and others. When it was over the people
were so moved and stirred that they found it
almost impossible to separate. Fox says: "It
was hard for Friends to part; for the glorious
power of the Lord, which was over all, and His
blessed truth and life flowing amongst them, had
so knit and united them together, that they spent
two days in taking leave one of another, and of
the Friends of the island; and then, being mightily
filled with the presence and power of the Lord
they went away, with joyful hearts, to their
various habitations, in the several colonies where
they lived." Later, after the great meeting was
over and the Friends had separated, Fox visited
Providence where Roger Williams, the founder
of the colony, lived. He believed in liberty and
he had done much to establish freedom of thought,
but he did not approve of Fox and he did not like
the ideas of the Quakers. For some reason he
did not come to the meeting to dispute with Fox,
as everybody expected he would do. But after
Fox had held his great meeting in Providence and
had left the colony, Roger Williams rowed in his
boat all the way to Newport, thirty miles, to
debate with him! Afterwards, when he found that
140 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX
Fox was gone, he wrote a book against him, which
he called George Fox Digged Out of His tlur-
rowes, and Fox answered it with another book
which he called The New England Firebrand
Quenched.
It is difficult to tell why George Fox did not
visit the other New England colonies. There
were many large meetings of Friends in Mas-
sachusetts and along the Piscataqua River in
New Hampshire. John Burnyeat and some of
the other travelers went to these eastern meetings,
but Fox saw only the Rhode Island meetings.
It is not possible to suppose that he was afraid
of the magistrates in Boston. It would have
been the first time in his life that he was ever
afraid of anybody. He appears to have felt that
he was more needed in the southern colonies and
that his companions could do the necessary work
in the other parts of New England. While he
was visiting Narraganset, where the people were
"mightily affected" by his preaching, he heard
that some of the magistrates said among them-
selves, that if they had money enough they would
hire him to be their minister. As soon as George
Fox heard this remark reported he said: "It is
time for me to be gone; for if their eye is so much
to me, or to any of us, they will not discover their
own true Teacher." \Vhereupon he started back
toward the south.
VISITING THE SEED IN AMERICA 14!
He had a very rough and stormy journey along
the Sound to Oyster Bay. From there he went
to Flushing, where, under the famous oak trees,
he had "a glorious heavenly meeting." Then
he hired a sloop; and, the wind serving, "set out
for the New Country, now called Jersey." He
sailed to Middletown Harbor and then rode thirty
miles, "through woods and bad bogs, one worse
than all the rest a place which the people of the
country called Purgatory. " On this rough journey
across New Jersey an accident befell one of the
travelers, the account of which is graphically
given in the 'Journal: "John Jay, a Friend of
Barbadoes, who came with us from Rhode Island
and intended to accompany us through the woods
of Maryland, being to try a horse, got upon his
back; and the horse fell a-running, and cast him
down upon his head, and broke his neck, as the
people said. They that were near him took him
up as dead, carried him a good way, and laid him
on a tree. I got to him as soon as I could; and
feeling him, concluded he was dead. As I stood
by him, pitying him and his family, I took hold
of his hair, and his head turned any way, his
neck was so limber. Whereupon I took his head
in both my hands, and setting my knees against
the tree, I raised his head, and perceived there
was nothing out or broken that way. Then I
put one hand under his chin, and the other behind
142 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX
his head, and raised his head two or three times
with all my strength, and brought it in. I soon
perceived his neck began to grow stiff again, and
then he began to rattle in the throat, and quickly
after to breathe. The people were amazed; but
I bid them have a good heart, be of good faith
and carry him into the house. They did so and
set him by the fire. I bid them get him something
warm to drink, and put him to bed. After he
had been in the house a while he began to speak;
but he did not know where he had been. The
next day we passed away (and he with us, pretty
well) about sixteen miles to a meeting at Middle-
town, through woods and bogs, and over a river;
where we swam our horses, and got over ourselves
upon a hollow tree. Many hundred miles did
he travel with us after this. To this meeting came
most of the people of the town. A glorious meet-
ing we had, and the Truth was over all; blessed
be the great Lord God for ever!"
It is not necessary to suppose that there was
anything miraculous about this cure. It shows,
however, a striking trait in the character of
George Fox. He always knows how to meet
emergencies. He is ready for any kind of crisis.
While the others stand around and weep over a
dying companion, he steps in and acts. He does
the wisest and best thing he knows of to do under
the circumstances. He has a faith and confidence
VISITING THE SEED IN AMERICA 143
which count for much. His dear friend William
Penn, who traveled much with him, "by night
and by day, by sea and by land," says: "I
never saw him out of his place, or not a match
for every service or occasion." On the return
journey from the northern colonies to the southern
Fox traveled through a long section of what is
now Pennsylvania. He crossed the Delaware
not far from the place where Burlington, New
Jersey, is now located, and traversed "the woods
on the other side of Delaware Bay. "
It is more than likely that this journey had an
important historical influence both on the later
settlement of New Jersey and on the building of
the great Quaker colony on the western shores
of the Delaware. He visited William Penn, at
Rickmansworth, almost as soon as he was back
again in England, and among the many things
they talked about, we may be sure one subject
was the possibility of transferring the persecuted
and suffering Friends in England and Wales to
the safe haven of refuge in these virgin forests
along the two sides of the Delaware River.
It proved to be no easy task to cross the creeks
and rivers which flow into the Delaware. One
of these Fox calls "a desperate river," which was
" hazardous to us and our horses. " The Christiana
River was also hard to cross. The party of Friends
went over in Indian canoes, swimming their horses
144 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX
behind. The main difficulty of the passage was
climbing the steep and miry banks, where the
horses nearly floundered. All along the journey
the Indians received much attention from George
Fox. They always "heard the truth attentively"
and were ' Very loving." The goal of the return-
ing journey for the present seems to have been
Tred Haven on the Chesapeake. Here a great
five days' meeting was held, to which everybody
appears to have come, magistrates and their
wives, persons of chief account in the country,
Papists and Protestants. As many as a thousand
people, in this new country, flocked to the meetings.
"I went by boat," Fox says, "every day four or
five miles to it, and there were so many boats at
that time passing upon the river, that it was
almost like the Thames. The people said, 'There
were never so many boats seen there together
before'; and one of the justices said, 'He never
saw so many people together in that country
before." It was "a heavenly meeting," "Friends
were sweetly refreshed, the people were satisfied
and many were convinced."
The effect of Fox's visit to Maryland was very
marked on the general religious life of the colony.
He stirred the entire country around the Ches-
apeake to fresh life. He next went on further
south to visit the scattered groups of Friends
in Virginia, where he found "much openness"
VISITING THE "SEED IN AMERICA 145
and where "truth spread," and then he set out
for the Carolinas. The way was very difficult,
through pathless forests, "plashy bogs and
swamps." The travelers were often soaking wet
and had to sleep uncovered in the woods. For
a single night they had the shelter of a friendly
house at Somerton, in southern Virginia, where
they had the comfort of a house floor before an
open fire and were waited upon by a woman who
"had a sense of God."
They sailed in a canoe down the Chowan River,
then called the Macocomocock. After holding
a "blessed meeting" with the people in that part
of the country, the little party of travelers canoed
the river Roanoke to Coney-Hoe Bay. Here they
borrowed a boat, as the water splashed over their
canoe, and they went to visit the governor of the
colony. Fox's account is an interesting one.
He says: "With this boat we went to the gov-
ernor's house; but the water in some places was
so shallow that the boat being laden, could not
swim; so that we were fain to put off our shoes
and stockings and wade through the water some
distance. The governor, with his wife, received
us lovingly; but a doctor there would needs dis-
pute with us. And truly his opposing us was of
good service, giving occasion for the opening of
many things to the people, concerning the light
and Spirit of God, which he denied to be in every
146 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX
one; and affirmed that it was not in the Indians.
Whereupon I called an Indian to us, and asked
him, 'Whether or not when he lied, or did wrong
to any one, there was not something in him that
reproved him for it?' He said, 'There was such
a thing in him, that did so reprove him; and he
was ashamed when he had done wrong, or spoken
wrong.' So we shamed the doctor before the
governor and the people; in so much that the
poor man ran out so far, that at length he would
not own the Scriptures. We tarried at the gov-
ernor's that night; and next morning he very
courteously walked with us himself about two
miles through the woods, to a place whither he
had sent our boat about to meet us. Taking leave
of him, we entered our boat, and went that day
about thirty miles to Joseph Scott's, one of the
representatives of the country. There we had
a sound, precious meeting; the people were tender,
and much desired after meetings. Wherefore at
a house about four miles further, we had another
meeting, to which the governor's secretary came,
who was chief secretary of the province, and had
been formerly convinced."
The return journey was more difficult even than
the southward journey had been, for the river
currents were now all against the travelers.
They lay night after night in their wet clothes
until they reached Somerton, Virginia, where
VISITING THE SEED IN AMERICA 147
they had the joy of the open hearth fire in the
home of the woman who had "a sense of God."
For three succeeding weeks Fox visited Friends
and meetings in Virginia and great power seems
to have attended his preaching, it "struck a
dread and brought a reverence upon the people's
minds."
Finally, Fox had a third and last great visit
through the settlements of the Maryland colony.
He had traveled two hundred miles from Nance-
mond in Virginia, sailing along the coast in a small
sailboat over which the waters often splashed, land-
ing on the shore for the night, where he slept in his
wet clothes before a fire of logs and where the wolves
often howled about the fire. Fox himself often sat
at the helm like a tried sailor and steered the boat.
He arrived at Patuxent "very weary," but ready
for another "precious meeting." This last tour of
Maryland occurred in mid-winter and the weather
was " bitterly cold." On his boat journeys to meet-
ings, he was sometimes chilled to the bone and al-
most lost the use of his hands, they were " so frozen
and benumbed with the cold." It was, however,
a time of renewed life and power. "The mighty
presence of the Lord was seen and felt over all."
A tide of life was raised throughout this entire
region which lasted in force for many generations.
In fact, this American visit of George Fox proved
to be one of the greatest religious events in the
148 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX
colonies during the seventeenth century. When
the ship "Woodhouse" landed in Rhode Island
"the irresistible word of the Lord" had come to
one of the Quaker missionaries on the ship and
he prophesied that "the Seed in America shall
be as the sands of the sea in number." By " Seed "
he meant the group of persons in America who
should discover the Light of Christ and live by
it and so form the Spiritual Church of the future.
Wherever there was anybody ready to receive
the truth and to spread it to others, there was
already the "seed" of a new and purer society,
the beginning of a better world. Well, George
Fox came to visit this "seed" in America and to
spread it into new places. When he had finished
his work around the Chesapeake he felt that he
was "clear," that is, that he had done all he came
to do in America, and with a free and joyous
heart he sailed away for old England where more
work and more sufferings and more love were
awaiting him. The return passage was a wild
and stormy one, the waves of the tempestuous
sea rising around their little ship like mountains,
but the wind blew in the right direction and car-
ried them rapidly across to their homeland, and
they arrived safely in Bristol, the 2oth of June,
1673, m record speed time, refreshed in spirit
and improved in health.
CHAPTER XV
IN WORCESTER JAIL
As soon as George Fox arrived in England
from his American journey and was hailed by his
friends with great joy, he wrote the following
glowing letter to his wife:
"Dear Heart,
"This day we came into Bristol near night,
from the sea; glory to the Lord God over all for
ever, who was our convoy and steered our course!
The God of the whole earth, of the seas and winds,
who made the clouds his chariot, beyond all words,
blessed be his name forever! He is over all in his
great power and wisdom, Amen. Robert Widders
and James Lancaster are with me, and we are
well; glory to the Lord for ever, who hath carried
us through many perils, perils by water, and in
storms, perils by pirates and robbers, perils in the
wilderness and amongst false professors! Praises
to him whose glory is over all for ever, Amen!
Therefore mind the fresh life, and live all to God
in it. I intend (if the Lord will) to stay a while
this away; it may be till the fair. So no more,
but my love to all Friends." G. F.
Margaret Fox hurried with all speed from
149
150 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX
Swarthmore to Bristol to meet her husband.
Two of her daughters with their husbands, and
William Penn and his wife, also came to share
in the joyous greetings to the returned traveler
who had faced the perils of sea and wilderness.
A great public meeting was held in Bristol and
"the Lord's infinite power" was felt to be "over
all." Fox preached a memorable sermon on this
occasion and the spirits of the entire group were
uplifted. After visiting a number of communities
and holding many "precious meetings/' the party
came to Rickmansworth, where they stopped for
a visit with William Penn and where we may be-
lieve there was much talk about America.
As they proceeded northward, after a visit to
London and to the Quaker schools for boys and
girls, and came on through Oxfordshire, Fox had
a strong intimation that a new prison experience
was coming upon him. "As I was sitting at sup-
per," he says, "I felt that I was taken, yet I said
nothing then to any one about it." The next
day after this inward warning came to him, Fox
attended "a large and precious meeting" in a
barn at Armscott in Worcestershire. The meeting
passed off undisturbed. After Friends had gone
home from the meeting Fox was sitting in a
Friend's parlor talking to a group of Friends when
suddenly a justice of the peace and a "priest"
who was the informer, came to arrest him for
IN WORCESTER JAIL
having attended a meeting, against the Convent-
icle Law. 1 They came too late to find the meeting
still going on, because, Fox says, the priest had
to delay his coming as it was the christening day
for his child and he "stayed for the sprinkling."
But, though they thus had no real ground for
the arrest, they seized Fox and his son-in-law
Thomas Lower and took them away to Worcester
Jail. It was naturally a terrible blow to Margaret
Fox who had been separated from her husband
almost all the time since they were married, and
who was now hoping for quiet, happy days in
Swarthmore Hall. Fox himself did not enjoy
the prospect of another long prison experience; but
he had learned to keep calm and to face whatever
came to him in the course of his duty. He at
once wrote this brave letter to his "Dear Heart":
" Dear Heart,
"Thou seemedst to be a little grieved when
I was speaking of prisons, and when I was taken;
be content with the will of the Lord God. For
when I was at John Rous's at Kingston, I had
a sight of my being taken prisoner, and when I
was at Bray Doily's in Oxfordshire, as I sat at
supper, I saw I was taken; and I saw I had a suffer-
ing to undergo. But the Lord's power is over all;
blessed be his holy name for ever!"
1 In 1670, a new Conventicle Act, more drastic and severe, than
the former one, had become a law.
152 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX
Thomas Lower had friends at court, his brother
being the King's physician, and he might have
been set free if he would have accepted his own
freedom and consented to be separated from
George Fox. This he would not do. He chose
to remain and suffer with his father-in-law rather
than to accept freedom alone. When the case
came to trial at the Court Sessions and there
appeared to be no evidence against Fox and his
companion, the officials resorted to the old scheme
of ensnaring the Quakers with the demand for
an oath. The Judge said: "Mr. Fox, you are a
famous man and for all we know you may be
innocent, but we shall be better satisfied if you
will take the oath of allegiance and supremacy."
Then they read the oath and asked Fox if he would
take it. "I told them, 'I never took an oath in
my life, but I had always been true to the govern-
ment; that I was cast into the dungeon at Derby,
and kept a prisoner six months there, because I
would not take up arms against King Charles
at Worcester fight; and for going to meetings was
carried up out of Leicestershire, and brought
before Oliver Cromwell, as a plotter to bring in
King Charles. And ye know,' said I, ' in your own
consciences, that we, the people called Quakers,
cannot take an oath, or swear in any case, be-
cause Christ hath forbidden it. But as to the mat-
ter or substance contained in the oaths, this I
IN WORCESTER JAIL 153
can and do say, that I do own and acknowledge
the king of England to be the lawful heir and
successor to the realm of England; and do abhor
all plots and plotters, and contrivances against
him; and I have nothing in my heart but love
and good-will to him and all men, and desire his
and their prosperity; the Lord knows it, before
whom I stand, an innocent man. And as to the
oath of supremacy, I deny the Pope, and his
power, and his religion, and abhor it with my
heart.' While I was speaking, they cried, 'give
him the book;' and I said, 'the book saith, "Swear
not at all." : Then they cried, 'take him away,
jailer;' and I still speaking on, they were urgent
upon the jailer, crying, 'take him away, we shall
have a meeting here; why do you not take him
away? that fellow (meaning the jailer) loves to
hear him preach.' Then the jailer drew me away,
and as I was turning from them, I stretched out
my arm and said, ' the Lord forgive you who cast
me into prison for obeying the doctrine of Christ/
Thus they apparently broke their promise in the
face of the country; for they promised I should
have free liberty to speak, but now they would
not give it to me; and they promised they would
not ensnare us, yet now they tendered me the
oaths on purpose to ensnare me."
Again Thomas Lower had an opportunity to
go free, but he would not leave his father and
154 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX
stayed on in the prison. It was decided to send
Fox up to London for trial and the under-sheriff
appointed Thomas Lower as his deputy to escort
the prisoner to London, so that these two men
went off alone to the trial before the King's Bench,
with the Chief Justice presiding. Fox was kindly
and leniently treated, and allowed to lodge at a
Friend's house while the trial was proceeding.
Every effort was made to induce him to take an
oath, but he was as immovable as a mountain.
In the end he was sent back to Worcester Jail
but was allowed to go his own way and at his own
leisure, provided only that he should be there
without fail for the April Court Assizes. He spent
some time in London and then went by slow stages
down to Worcester. He walked to the jail with-
out any keeper and turned himself over to the
authorities. He was put in charge of a boy eleven
years old!
Again, at the Sessions, the old question of the
oath came up and was discussed at length. He
declared himself ready to sign a paper approving
of the King's government and setting forth his
loyalty, but to take an oath he would not, even
if he remained till doomsday in the prison. Once
more the case was postponed to the next session
of Court and he returned to his imprisonment.
At the next session the jailer's son offered to give
bail for Fox and let him have his freedom. The
IN WORCESTER JAIL 155
Court decided to let him go at large without bail
until the next Court sessions, because they were
thoroughly convinced that he was not a dangerous
subject. By this provision he was allowed to go
up to London and attend the yearly meeting in
May, 1674.
Soon after this meeting was over, which was
"glorious beyond expression," Fox returned to
Worcester again for trial. The old bugaboo of
the oath came up again, and the Court now threat-
ened to inflict the sentence of prcemunire upon him
if he continued to refuse the oath. He faced
the terrible penalty unmoved and went back to
prison. A serious attack of illness came upon him
soon after this and he appears to have gone through
another experience of a similar sort to those al-
ready described. Death seemed to hover over
him and yet an invisible power sustained and re-
freshed the broken man. "One night," he says,
"as I was lying awake upon my bed in the glory
of the Lord, which was over all, it was said unto
me, 'The Lord has a great deal more work for
thee to do for Him, before He takes thee to Him-
self." 1 With this consciousness of divine love and
care he could face the lonely days and the hard
fare and even the weakness of his prison-worn
body.
Meantime Margaret Fox went to see the King
in person and to plead for justice to her long-suffer-
156 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX
ing husband. The only way out seemed to be a
pardon from the King, but Fox would not accept
a pardon. A pardon would indicate that he was
guilty and that he would not admit. "I had
rather lain in prison all my days," Fox says, " than
have come out in any way dishonorable to the
truth." He insisted on a fair trial and a chance
to defend himself. It was finally decided to bring
him up once more to London, for trial before the
King's Bench. Thomas Corbet, an able councillor
at law, pleaded his case before Sir Matthew
Hale, the Chief Justice. A complete victory was
won. The indictment was quashed, and Fox
was granted his liberty. Some of the old adver-
saries who had dogged him at each session, tried
to induce the Chief Justice to demand the oath of
him, on the ground that he was a dangerous man
and ought not to be allowed at large. Judge
Hale replied that he had heard rumors that George
Fox was dangerous, but that he had heard many
more reports that he was a good man and he
ordered the unconquerable man freed by proclama-
tion. He had been under arrest and imprisonment
for fourteen months. He was freed in time to
attend London Yearly Meeting in 1675 a time
when "the everlasting power of God" was mani-
fested, and toward the end of June he was once
more permitted to be in Swarthmore Hall with
his wife. Colonel Kirkby, his old persecutor, now
IN WORCESTER JAIL 157
changed and softened, came to visit him in the
Hall and bid him welcome- into the country, and,
Fox says, "he carried himself very lovingly!"
However attractive Swarthmore Hall must
have seemed after American forests and Worcester
prison quarters, nothing could long hold George
Fox from his religious travels. The "Seed" in
England needed him, and in a very short time
he was off again on long journeys through the
counties. Now one Friend and now another ac-
companied him and everywhere in Quaker com-
munities he was welcomed and appreciated. He
steadily improved the organization and the disci-
pline; he corrected errors and wrong practices; he
encouraged the weak and he aroused and inspired
the whole membership.
In 1677, a new field of foreign service opened
for him and with old time enthusiasm he prepared
for new dangers and struggles. "It was," he
says, "upon me from the Lord to go to Holland,
to visit Friends and to preach the gospel there,
and in some parts of Germany." His two great
friends, William Penn and Robert Barclay, went
on this journey with him. Besides these two
pillars he had also in his company George Keith,
John Furley, Isabel Yeamans Fox's step-daughter,
and a number of others. They found many
Friends in Holland and many more people who
were near-Friends and sympathetic with the teach-
158 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX
ings of Fox. They held great meetings and debated
with Baptists and Seekers and Brownists and many
more little groups of Christians. Fox says that
" the everlasting truth was declared among them."
One of the most interesting episodes of this visit
was the happy fellowship with Princess Elizabeth,
one of the most remarkable women in Europe
at this time. She was the granddaughter of King
James I. of England and the daughter of Frederick,
Elector Palatine and King of Bohemia. She was
a great scholar, a friend of Descartes, the philoso-
pher, and she was a devoted earnest Christian,
always eager to learn more truth and to discover
more light. William Penn and Robert Barclay
had already visited her at a former time. Fox
was unable to have a personal visit with her, and
so he wrote her a religious epistle setting forth to
her his views and teaching, which he sent by the
hand of his step-daughter. Princess Elizabeth
greatly appreciated it and wrote him a beautiful
answer, in which she promised to follow his advice
as far as God should give her light to do so.
George Fox, with an interpreter, took an ex-
tensive journey in Germany, visiting many Ger-
man cities and hunting out groups of mystics and
spiritual people who were prepared for his message.
Many were reached and convinced, and some who
later came to find homes in Pennsylvania were
first drawn to Friends by this famous visit in 1677.
IN WORCESTER JAIL 159
Fox went over to Holland again, but not to Ger-
many, in 1684. On this second visit he met most
of the Friends on the Continent, especially those
in Holland and Germany, at a great meeting
in Amsterdam. He had at this time an interesting
visit with a very remarkable Dutchman named
Galenus Abrahams, a leader among the "Seekers"
in Holland. William Penn and Robert Barclay
had debated with him on the former visit, but
Fox had not taken part in the debate, because
Abrahams refused to discuss with him. When
Fox fixed his gaze upon him and started to talk
with him, he became embarrassed and cried out:
"Take thy eyes off me; they pierce me!" But on
this second visit Abrahams changed and was
"very loving and tender and confessed in some
measure to truth." These two journeys to the
Continent complete the foreign travels of George
Fox. His "disciples" went to almost all parts
of the world. They made their way to the Sultan;
they visited the Pope; they went to the uttermost
parts of the earth. But he felt that his duty lay
for the most part in building up the Society which
had grown up around him in England.
There were still some serious returns of per-
secution. As of old, George Fox was always to
be found where the danger was the greatest.
When the arrests under the Conventicle Law be-
came thick and frequent in 1683, he always went
l6o THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX
to the London meeting which was most likely to
be invaded by the officers, and once again, though
now an old and broken man, he risked the chance
of a new imprisonment, but it did not fall upon
him this time. His imprisonments were over.
In 1688 a great release of prisoners for conscience'
sake was made by the King. Many hundreds
of Friends came forth from the cells where they
had lain for months and years, and great joy
thrilled through the heart of Fox to see his friends
free. From this time until his death Fox traveled
less and slowed down in his labors. His body
was not able any longer to stand the strains it
once had borne. He found himself compelled
to go to the country frequently for fresh air, as
London, with its fogs, seemed to oppress him.
He was often in the country with William Penn,
watching the shaping of the great plans for the
new colony in America, and when he was not
preaching or journeying he was writing tracts
and epistles and books. There were two periods
between his last great imprisonment and his death,
when he spent a good deal of time at Swarthmore
Hall. His wife was deeply affectionate toward
him, her daughters loved him like an own father,
and he would have had the tenderest care if he
could have felt free to spend his declining years
in that quiet retreat, but he was fashioned for
struggle and service, and he had to work while any
IN WORCESTER JAIL l6l
strength remained. So long as his body held his
tireless spirit in it, he was always moving forward
and always busy with some work for the spread
of the truth and the light, but, whether he thought
about it or not, his body was wearing out and was
fast approaching its limit of endurance. "I was
hardly able," he says in 1688, the year of the great
English Revolution, "to stay in a meeting the
whole time; and after a meeting I had to lie down
on a bed."
CHAPTER XVI
"ALL OF GOD ALMIGHTY'S MAKING"
ON the tenth of January, 1691, George Fox
went on First Day morning (Sunday) to Grace-
Church Street Meeting in London. It was a very
large meeting and, persecution now being over,
it was quiet and undisturbed by officers. George
Fox preached on that occasion the last sermon
of his life. Those who heard it felt that it opened
"many deep and weighty things with great power
and clearness." Then, having finished his sermon,
he kneeled down and prayed, with his whole
being moved, his face radiant and his spirit full
of reverence and awe. Under the covering of
that mighty prayer the meeting closed, the people
all shook hands and scattered to their homes.
Fox went home with Henry Goldney in White
Hart Court, near the meetinghouse by that name.
A little group of devoted Friends walked with him,
still under the spell and power of the great meeting,
just ended. As they went quietly along through
the street, Fox told his Friends that he felt a
chill come over him and a cold seemed to strike
into his heart. "But," he added, "I am glad I
was there at that meeting; now I am clear, I am
162
"ALL OF GOD ALMIGHTY'S MAKING" 163
fully clear." That fine old word "clear" meant
that he had done his full duty and had completely
finished what God had given him to do.
He often found it necessary to lie down for a
little while after he had preached a powerful
sermon, for all his vital powers seemed exhausted
with the pouring out of his spirit, and he thought
at first that this chill was only a result of his
usual weakness of body after a great effort.
He soon got up from the bed and tried to walk
about, but there was no strength to command his
body. It was quite worn out and had come at
last to the full end of what it could do. He soon
returned to his bed and lay peaceful and contented,
like a tired child tucked comfortably into bed by
its mother. His mind remained clear and un-
clouded. He had once before in his life seen that
there was an ocean of darkness and death, but that
an infinite ocean of light and love flowed over the
ocean of darkness, and so now he rested calm and
undisturbed in the consciousness of the infinite
love of God.
He talked much about spreading the truth and
how after he was gone the work must still go
forward by pen and word. There was no sign of
fear, no note of sadness, no mark of defeat. Once
he said to those about him: "All is well; the
Seed of God reigns over all and over death itself.
I am weak of body but the power of God is over
164 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX
all." For nearly three days the final illness lasted,
with steadily increasing weakness of body and
growing triumph of spirit. The ancient account
very happily says: "He lay in a heavenly frame
of mind, and between the hours of nine and ten
in the evening of the third day of the week, he
quietly departed this life in peace, and sweetly
fell asleep in the Lord, whose blessed truth he had
livingly and powerfully preached."
His Friends from far and near flocked in to the
great funeral in White Hart Court meetinghouse,
where the story of the labors and dangers and
sufferings of the valiant life were lovingly told
and the beauty and sublimity of his faith in God
were set forth with the triumphs of truth which
he proclaimed. Then his Friends bore the worn-
out body to its last resting place among the graves
of faithful martyrs for the light, in Bunhill-Fields.
His "Dear Heart," Margaret, wrote a beautiful
and affectionate testimony to his memory and the
Morning Meeting in London sent out to all
Friends everywhere a tender epistle giving an
account of what the Lord had done through this
faithful servant of the truth. But the most
remarkable of all the sincere personal apprecia-
tions of George Fox was the one written by his
intimate friend and fellow-laborer, William Penn.
It is done in beautiful style. It breathes a noble
spirit and it reveals the genuine character of the
"ALL OF GOD ALMIGHTY'S MAKING" 165
man whom it seeks to portray. It touches upon
simple traits of his person and of his behavior and
it also deals with the deepest features of his inner
soul. He tells us that his friend was "civil in his
behavior," i. e., refined, "beyond all forms of
breeding"; "very temperate, eating little and
sleeping less, though a bulky person." Though he
had little book-learning and was ignorant of what
passed in his day for science, yet "he had in him,"
Penn says, "the foundation of all useful and com-
mendable knowledge and cherished it everywhere,"
and he always showed surprising skill in answer-
ing difficult questions. In short, in a fine, swift
phrase Penn says: " In all things he aquitted himself
like a man, yea a strong man, a new and heavenly-
minded man; a divine and a naturalist and all
of God Almighty's making" He dwells tenderly
upon the way people loved his dear friend "with
unfeigned and unfading love"; of his majestic
presence; of his awful, living, reverent frame in
prayer; of his power to discern other persons'
spirits and to master his own; of the unique and
original quality of his personality; of his ability
to go to the heart and marrow of things and of
his power to stand the universe, with its storms
and waterspouts. With a light and splendid touch
he indicates the final triumph over death: "As
he lived, so he died; feeling the same eternal power,
that had raised and preserved him, in his last
1 66 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX
moments. So full of assurance was he, that he
triumphed over death; and so even in his spirit to
the last, as if death were hafdly worth notice or a
mention."
Such, then, was our new kind of hero, who
lived and wrought and suffered for the truth
and for the kingdom of Christ. His religious
message, like the man himself, was direct, clear
and simple. He would have nothing to do with
sham or insincerity or artificial schemes. Reli-
gion for him was a way of living, not merely
something written in a book. It begins with a
vital experience of the living God, who is near at
hand, dwelling, moving, working, speaking in man's
heart. Every time something in the soul points
out the right course of action and reveals what
is wrong, God is there. Whenever truth triumphs
over error and light over darkness and purity over
evil and goodness over wickedness and love over
hate there God is working His work of the new
creation in the world to-day. His kingdom comes
as fast as people like us turn toward the true light
and love it and follow it and do it. God is not
far off above the sky or hidden in the past history
of the world, a Being who once revealed Himself
to a chosen few and then ceased to speak to human
hearts. He is always speaking to men, always
sending out His light and love, always revealing
His will. He is as near the soul as is the air to the
"ALL OF GOD ALMIGHTY'S MAKING" 167
bird. This was the central teaching of George
Fox, and something like this he preached through
the English counties and along the Atlantic coast-
line of America, in the West Indies, in Wales, in
Ireland, in Scotland, in Holland and in Germany.
This idea, this "truth," he always called it,
made him believe in the infinite preciousness anH
person in the world. Close be-
hind the human face was the holy habitation of
God. Here within was the only true temple and
here every listening soul, no matter how poor or
how humble, might hear the voice of the infinite
One. It made him believe, too, that woman was
in every way man's companion and equal. One
was not more precious or more exalted than the
other. Through both alike God could speak and
through both alike He could do His spiritual work
for the making of a new world after the divine
pattern. He did not debate about women's rights.
He proclaimed their equal privilege and respon-
sibility with men and called upon them to rise
up and do the mighty work in the world for which
they were made.
He gave a new importance to silence in worship.
If God was near the soul, as he kept saying He
was, then one way to discover Him and to hear
His voice speaking was to become quiet and still,
so that He could be heard. When we wish to
hear an important message over the telephone we
l68 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX
prepare for it by hushing all conversation and un-
neccessary noises in the room. We give the mes-
sage a chance to reach us, which it would not have
if the din prevailed around us. So, too, with the
greatest of all messages, we must prepare for it.
We must listen before we talk. We must hearken
before we speak. Because George Fox believed
this he arranged for periods of silence in his meet-
ings. He preferred to listen rather than to speak
and only to speak after he had heard God speak.
He taught that, in any case, religion is not
words, words, words, but real experience of God.
It is always better to see a sunset than to hear a
description of one; it is worth much more to see
the Sistine Madonna than to read about it in a
book; it is much more thrilling to climb a moun-
tain peak than to see a picture of a man climbing
one; and it is infinitely more important to feel the
tender presence of the living God than it is to
hear somebody tell how Abraham and Elijah,
ages ago, felt it. George Fox knew this fact, he
himself had had this firsthand experience and he
called his generation to get the same experience
for themselves. He meant to put vital religion
within the reach of everybody. He wanted to
make everybody his own priest. He hoped to
make religion as free and as universal as sunlight
and air. He tried to reproduce in the world of
his day the kind of Church which the New Testa-
"ALL OF GOD ALMIGHTY'S MAKING" 169
ment tells about in its wonderful pages. It would
be a Church in which everybody should have a
part and a share. It would be a Church with
Christ for the real Head of it, a Church with the
living Spirit of God moving and working in all its
members. It would be a Church through which
the will of God was constantly being freshly re-
vealed, a living, growing, expanding, transforming
Church.
Because he believed these things he was a man
full of faith and hope and good cheer. "The Seed
of God reigns," were his living words as well as
his dying words. "An ocean of light and love
flows over the ocean of darkness." You cannot
down a man who has a faith like that. Prisons
have no terror for him, persecution does not break
his nerve. He knows that God is really working
all things up to better and that the brave man can
wait in patience. "Love the truth," he once said,
"more than all, and go on in the mighty power of
God as good soldiers of Jesus Christ." We can
surely agree with the testimony which his intimate
friend Thomas Ellwood gave him: IJe was "val-
iant for die Truth, bold injissgrfing if, patjgrit m
siTfFeringlor it, unweariedTrTTaboring for it T steady
m his testimony to it, immovable as a rock." A
man who lived that way had a right to say, as he
faced death unmoved, "I am clear, I am fully
clear."
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