Chapter XIX: The Children of Reading Meeting

It was a most uncomfortable First Day morning. The children looked at each other and wondered what would happen next, as they stood in the small bedroom under the thatched roof. Dorcas, the eldest, already half dressed, held Baby Stephen in her arms; but the twins, Tryphena and Tryphosa, were running about the floor with bare feet and only their petticoats on, strings and tapes all flying loose. Baby was crying, whilst the Twins shouted with mischievous glee. Something must be done. So Dorcas seated herself in a big chair and tried to dress Baby. But Baby was hungry. He wanted his breakfast and he did not at all want to be dressed! Oh, if only Mother was here! Where was Mother all this long time? Had she and Father really been taken to prison? Dorcas felt heart-sick at the thought. Happily the Twins and Baby were too little to understand. She herself was nearly ten and therefore almost grown up. She understood now all about it quite well. This was what Mother had meant when she bent down to kiss her little girl in bed last night, saying that she was going out to a Meeting at Friend Curtis' house, hoping to be back in an hour or two. 'But if not'--here Dorcas remembered that Mother's eyes had filled with tears. She had left the sentence unfinished, adding only: 'Anyway, I know I can trust thee, Dorcas, to be a little mother to the little ones while I am away.' 'But if not....' Dorcas had been too sleepy last night to think what the words meant, or to keep awake until Mother's return. It seemed as if she had only just closed her eyes for a minute or two; and yet, when she opened them again, the bright morning sunlight was filling the room.

'But if not....' After all, there had been no need for Mother to finish the sentence. Now that Dorcas was wide awake she could complete it for herself only too well. For Dorcas knew that at any moment a Meeting of five or more persons who met to practise a form of worship not authorized by law might be rudely interrupted by the constables, and all the Friends who were sitting in silence together dragged off to prison for disobeying the Quaker Act. Since that Act had been passed in this same month of May 1662, Quaker children understood that this might happen at any moment, but of course each child hoped that it would not happen just yet, or at least not to his own Father and Mother. But now apparently it had happened here in peaceful Reading beside the broad Thames.

Last night's Meeting had been fixed at an unusually late hour. For, as the late Spring evenings were lengthening, the Reading Quakers had wished to take advantage of the long May twilight to gather together and meet with a Friend, one of the Valiant Sixty, who had come in for a few hours unexpectedly on his way to London. So the children had fallen asleep as usual, fully expecting to find their parents beside them when they woke. But now the empty places and the unslept-in beds told their own tale.

'Be a mother to the little ones, Dorcas,' Mother had said. Well, Dorcas was trying her very best, but it was not easy. Baby had many strings to tie and many buttons to fasten, and just as she was getting the very last button safely into its button-hole the Twins came running up to say that they had got into each other's clothes by mistake and could not get out of them again. This was serious; for though Phenie's frock was only a little too big for Phosie, Phosie's frock was much too small for Phenie.

Dorcas was obliged to put Baby down to attend to them; but this reminded Baby that he had still not been provided with his much-desired breakfast, whereupon he began to howl, till Dorcas took him up in her arms again, and dandled him as Mother did. This made him crow for happiness, just as he did when Mother took him, so for a few minutes Dorcas was happy too, till she saw that the Twins were now beginning to squabble again, and to tear out each other's hair with the comb. At that unlucky moment up came brother Peter's big voice calling from below, 'Dorcas, Dorcas, what are you all doing up there? Why is not breakfast ready? I have milked the cow for you. You must come down this very minute; I am starving!'

It was an uncomfortable morning; and the worst of it was that it was First Day morning too. Dorcas had not known before that a First Day morning could be uncomfortable. Usually First Day was the happiest day in the whole week. Mother's hands were so gentle that, though the children had been taught to help themselves as soon as they were old enough, still Mother always seemed to know just when there was an unruly button that needed a little coaxing to help it to find its hole, or a string that wanted to get into a knot that ought to be persuaded to tie itself into a bow.

Then breakfast was always a pleasant meal, with the big blue bowls full of milk, warm from the cow, set out on the wooden table, and Father sitting at one end raising his hand as he said a silent Grace. Father never said any words at these times. But he bent his head as if he were thanking Someone he loved very much, Someone close beside him, for giving him the milk and bread to give to the children and for making him very happy. So the children felt happy too. Dorcas thought that the brown bread always tasted especially good on First Day morning, because Father was at the head of the table to cut it and hand it to them himself. On other, week-day, mornings he had to go off much earlier, ploughing, or reaping, or gathering in the ripe corn from the harvest-fields behind the farm. Also, Peter never teased the little ones when Father was there. But to-day if there were no breakfast, (and where was breakfast to come from?) Peter would be dreadfully cross. Yet how could Dorcas go and get breakfast for Peter when the three little ones were all wanting her help at once?

'I'm coming, Peter, as fast as ever I can,' she called back, in answer to a second yet more peremptory summons. But, oh! how glad she was to hear a gentle knock at the door of the thatched cottage a minute or two later.

'Come in! come in!' she heard Peter saying joyfully as he opened the door, and then came the sound of light footsteps on the wooden stairs. Another minute, and the bedroom door opened gently, and a sunshiny face looked into the children's untidy room.

'Why, it is thee, Hester!' Dorcas exclaimed, with a cry of joy. 'Oh, I am glad to see thee! And how glad Mother would be to know thou wert here.'

The girl who entered was both taller and older than Dorcas. She was a well-loved playfellow evidently, for Tryphena and Tryphosa toddled towards her across the room at once, to be caught up in her arms and kissed.

'Of course, it is I, Dorcas,' she answered promptly. 'Who else should it be? Prudence and I determined that we would come over and try to help thee as soon as we could. We brought a basket of provisions too, in case you were short. Prudence is helping Peter to set out breakfast in the kitchen now, so we must hasten.'

Life often becomes easy when you are two, however difficult it may have been when you were only one! With Hester to help, the dressing was finished at lightning speed. Yet, when the children came down to the kitchen, Prudence and Peter already had the fire blazing away merrily; the warm milk was foaming in the bowls. The hungry children thought, as they drank it up, that never before had breakfast tasted so good.

'Hester, what made thee think of coming?' Dorcas asked a little later, when, Baby's imperious needs being satisfied, she was able to begin her own breakfast, while he drummed an accompaniment on the back of her hand with a wooden spoon. 'How did the news reach thee? Or have they taken thy Father and Mother away too? Have all the Friends gone to gaol this time?'

Hester nodded. Her bright face clouded for a moment or two. Then she resolutely brushed the cloud away.

'Yea, in truth, Dorcas,' she answered. 'I fear much that only we children are left. Anyhow, thy parents and mine are taken, and the others as well most like. My Father had warning from a trusty source that he and other Friends had best not meet in Thomas Curtis' house last night. But he is never one to be turned aside from his purpose, thou knows. So he took me between his knees and said, "Hester, dear maid, thy mother and I must go. 'Tis none of our choosing. If we are taken, fear not for us, nor for thyself and Prue. Only seek to nourish and care for the tender babes in the other houses, whence Friends are likely to be taken also." Therefore I hastened hither to help thee, Dorcas, bringing Prudence with me, partly because I love thee, and thou art mine own dear friend, but also because it was my Father's command. If I can be of service to thee, perhaps he will pat my head when he returns out of gaol and say, as he doth sometimes, "I knew I could trust thee, my Hester."'

'Will they be long in prison, dost thou think?' asked Dorcas, with a tremor in her voice. She was always an anxious-minded little girl, and inclined to look on the gloomy side of things, whereas Hester was sunshine itself.

'Who can say?' answered Hester, and again even her bright face clouded. 'The Justices are sure to tender to them the oath, but since they follow Him who commanded, "Swear not at all," how can they take it?'

'Then, if they refuse, they will be said to be out of the King's protection, and the Justices and the gaolers may do with them as they will,' added Peter doggedly.

At these words Hester, seeing that Dorcas looked very sorrowful and almost ready to cry, checked Peter suddenly, and said, 'At any rate, we can but hope for the best. And now we must hasten, or we shall be late for Meeting.'

'Meeting?' Dorcas looked up in surprise. 'I thought thou saidst that all the Friends had been taken.'

'All the men and women, yes,' answered Hester; 'but we children are left. We know what our Fathers and Mothers would have us do.'

Here Peter broke in, 'Yes, of course, Dorcas, we must go to show them that Friends are not cowards, and that we will keep up our Meetings come what may. Dost thou not mind what friend Thomas Curtis' wife, Mistress Nan, has often told us of her father, the Sheriff of Bristol? How he was hung before his own door, because men said he was endeavouring to betray the city to Prince Rupert, and thus serve his king in banishment. Shall we be less loyal than he?'

'Loyal to our King, Dorcas,' added Hester gently.

Dorcas hesitated no longer.

'Thou art right, Hester,' she answered, 'and Peter, thou art right too. We will go all together. I had forgotten. Of course children as well as grown-up people can wait upon God.'

* * * * *

The children arrived at the Friends' usual meeting place, only to find it locked and strongly guarded. They went on, undismayed, to Friend Lamboll's orchard, but, there also, two heavy padlocks, sealed with the King's seal, were upon the green gate. An old goody from a cottage hard by waved them away. 'Be off, children! Here is no place for you,' she said; adding not unkindly, 'your parents were taken near here yester eve, and the officers of the law are still prowling round. This orchard is sure to be one of the first places they will visit.'

Then seeing the tired look on Dorcas' face, as she turned to go, with heavy Stephen in her arms: 'Here, give the babe to me,' she said, 'I'll care for him this forenoon. Thy mother managed to get a word with me last night as the officers dragged her away, and I promised her I would do what I could to help you, though you be Quakers and I hold to the Church. See, he'll be safe in this cradle while you go and play, though it is forty years and more since it held a babe of my own.'

Very thankfully Dorcas laid Stephen, now sleeping peacefully, down in the oaken cradle in the old woman's flagged kitchen. Then she ran off to join the others assembled at a little distance from the orchard gate. By this time a few more children had joined them: two or three girls, and four or five older boys.

Where were they to meet? The sight of the closed house, and the sealed gate, even the mention of the officers of the law, far from frightening the children, had only made them more than ever clear that, somewhere or other, the Meeting must be held.

At length one of the elder boys suggested 'My father's granary?' The very place!--they all agreed: so thither the little flock of children trooped. The granary was a large building of grey stone lighted only by two mullioned windows high up in the walls. In Queen Elizabeth's days these windows had lighted the small rooms of an upper storey, but now the dividing floor had been removed to make more room for the grain which lay piled up as high as the roof over more than half the building. But, at one end, there was an empty space on the floor, and here the children seated themselves on scattered bundles of hay.

Quietly Meeting began. At first some of the children peeped up at one another anxiously under their eyelids. It felt very strange somehow to be gathering together in silence alone without any grown-up people. Were they really doing right? Dorcas' heart began to beat rather nervously, and a hot flush dyed her cheek, until she looked across at Hester sitting opposite, and was calmed by the peaceful expression of the elder girl's face. Hester's hood had fallen back upon her shoulders. Her fair hair, slightly ruffled, shone like a halo of pale gold against the grey stone wall of the granary. Her blue eyes were looking up, up at the blue sky, far away beyond the high window.

'Hester looks happy, almost as if she were listening to something,' Dorcas said to herself, 'something that comforts her although we are all sad.' Then, settling herself cosily down into the hay, 'Now I will try to listen for comfort too.'

A few moments later the silence was broken by a half-whispered prayer from a dark corner of the granary, 'Our dear, dear parents! help them to be brave and faithful, and make us all brave and faithful too.'

None of the boys and girls looked round to see who had spoken, for the words seemed to come from the deepest place in their own hearts.

Swiftly and speedily the children's prayer was answered. Help was given to them, but they needed every scrap of their courage and faith during the next half-hour. Almost before the last words of the prayer died away, a loud noise was heard and the tramp of heavy feet coming round the granary wall. The officers of the law were upon them: 'What, yet another conventicle of these pestilential heretics to be broken up?' shouted a wrathful voice. The next moment the door was roughly burst open, and in the doorway appeared a much dreaded figure, no less a person than Sir William Armorer himself, Justice of the Peace and Equerry to the King. None of the children had any very clear idea as to the meaning of that word 'equerry'; therefore it always filled them with a vague terror of unknown possibilities. In after years, whenever they heard it they saw again an angry man with a florid face, dressed in a suit of apple-green satin slashed with gold, standing in a doorway and wrathfully shaking a loaded cane over their heads.

'Yet more of ye itching to be laid by the ears in gaol!' shouted this apparition as he entered and slammed the heavy wooden door behind him. But an expression of amazement followed when he was once inside the room.

'Brats! By my life! Quaker brats! and none beside them!' he exclaimed astonished, as he looked round the band of children. 'Quaker brats holding a conventicle of their own, as if they were grown men and women! Having stopped the earth and gaoled the fox, must we now deal with the litter? Look you here, do you want a closer acquaintance with this?'

With these words, he pointed his loaded stick at each of the children in turn and drew out a sharp iron point concealed in one end of it, and began to slash the air. Then, changing his mind again, he went back to the door and called out to his followers in the passage outside, 'Here, men, we will let the maidens go, but you must teach these lads what it is to disobey the law, or I'm no Justice of His Majesty's Peace.'

Even in that moment of terror the children wondered not only at the loud angry voice but at the unfamiliar scent that filled the room. The air, which had been pure and fragrant with the smell of hay, was now heavy and loaded with essences and perfumes. Well it might be, for though the children knew it not, the flowing lovelocks of the curly wig that descended to the Justice's shoulders had been scented that very morning with odours of ambergris, musk, and violet, orris root, orange flowers, and jessamine, as well as others besides. The stronger scents of kennel and stable, and even of ale and beer, that filled the room as the constables trooped into it were almost a relief to the children, because they at least were familiar, and unlike the other strange, sickly fragrance.

The constables seized the boys, turned them out into the road, and there punched and beat them with their own staffs and the Justice's loaded stick until they were black in the face. The girls were driven in a frightened bunch down the lane. Only Hester sat on in her place, still and unmoved, sheltering the Twins in her bosom and holding her hands over their eyes. Up to her came the angry Justice in a fine rage, until it seemed as if the perfumed wig must almost touch her smooth plaits of hair. Then, at last, Hester moved, but not in time to prevent the Justice seizing her by the shoulder and flinging her down the road after the others. Her frightened charges, torn from her arms, still clung to her skirts, while the full-grown men strode along after them, threatening to duck them all in the pond if they made the slightest resistance, and did not at once disperse to their homes.

It certainly was neither a comfortable thing nor a pleasant thing to be a Quaker child in those stormy days.

Nevertheless, pleasant or unpleasant, comfortable or uncomfortable, made no difference. It was thanks to the courage of this handful of boys and girls that, in spite of the worst that Mr. Justice Armorer could do, in spite of the dread of him and his constables, in spite of his angry face, of his scented wig and loaded cane, in spite of all these things,--still, Sunday after Sunday, through many a long anxious month, God was worshipped in freedom and simplicity in the town by silver Thames. Reading Meeting was held.

Meantime, throughout these same long months, within the prison walls the fathers and mothers prayed for their absent children. Although apart from one another, the two companies were not really separated; for both were listening to the same Shepherd's voice. Until, at last, the happy day came when the gaol-doors were opened and the prisoners released. Then, oh the kissing and the hugging! the crying and the blessing! as the parents heard of all the children had undergone in order to keep faithful and true! That was indeed the most joyful meeting of all!

Thankfulness and joy last freshly through the centuries, as an old letter, written at that time by one of the fathers to George Fox still proves to us to-day: 'Our little children kept the meetings up, when we were all in prison, notwithstanding that wicked Justice when he came and found them there, with a staff that had a spear in it would pull them out of the Meeting, and punch them in the back till some of them were black in the face ... his fellow is not, I believe, to be found in all England a Justice of the Peace.'

* * * * *

'For they might as well think to hinder the Sun from shining, or the tide from flowing, as to think to hinder the Lord's people from meeting to wait upon Him.'