Chapter XX: Front Matter (20)

The activity of the early Friends was not confined to England or even to the British Isles. Fox and others travelled in America and the West India Islands; another reached Jerusalem and preached against the superstition of the monks; Mary Fisher (fl. 1652-1697), "a religious maiden," visited Smyrna, the Morea and the court of Mahommed IV. at Adrianople; Alexander Parker (1628-1689) went to Africa; others made their way to Rome; two women were imprisoned by the Inquisition at Malta; two men passed into Austria and Hungary; and William Penn, George Fox and several others preached in Holland and Germany.

It was only gradually that the Quaker community clothed itself with an organization. The beginning of this appears to be due to William Dewsbury (1621-1688) and George Fox; it was not until 1666 that a complete system of church organization was established. The introduction of an ordered system and discipline was, naturally, viewed with some suspicion by people taught to believe that the inward light of each individual man was the only true guide for his conduct. The project met with determined opposition for about twenty years (1675-1695) from persons of considerable repute in the body. John Wilkinson and John Story of Westmorland, together with William Rogers of Bristol, raised a party against Fox concerning the management of the affairs of the society, regarding with suspicion any fixed arrangement for meetings for conducting church business, and in fact hardly finding a place for such meetings at all. They stood for the principle of Independency against the Presbyterian form of church government which Fox had recently established in the "Monthly Meetings" (see below). They opposed all arrangement for the orderly distribution of travelling ministers to different localities, and even for the payment of their expenses (see above); they also strongly objected to any disciplinary power being entrusted to the women's separate meetings for business, which had become of considerable importance after the Plague (1665) and the Fire of London (1666) in consequence of the need for poor relief. They also claimed the right to meet secretly for worship in time of persecution (see below). They drew a considerable following away with them and set up a rival organization, but before long a number returned to their original leader. William Rogers set forth his views in _The Christian Quaker_, 1680; the story of the dissension is told, to some extent, in _The Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the Commonwealth_, by R. Barclay (not the "Apologist"); the best account is given in a pamphlet entitled _Micah's Mother_ by John S. Rowntree.

Robert Barclay (q.v.), a descendant of an ancient Scottish family, who had received a liberal education, principally in Paris, at the Scots College, of which his uncle was rector, joined the Quakers about 1666, and William Penn (q.v.) came to them about two years later. The Quakers had always been active controversialists, and a great body of tracts and papers was issued by them; but hitherto these had been of small account from a literary point of view. Now, however, a more logical and scholarly aspect was given to their literature by the writings of Barclay, especially his _Apology for the True Christian Divinity_ published in Latin (1676) and in English (1678), and by the works of Penn, amongst which _No Cross No Crown_ and the _Maxims_ or _Fruits of Solitude_ are the best known.

Persecution.

During the whole time between their rise and the passing of the Toleration Act 1689, the Quakers were the object of almost continuous persecution which they endured with extraordinary constancy and patience; they insisted on the duty of meeting openly in time of persecution, declining to hold secret assemblies for worship as other Nonconformists were doing. The number who died in prison approached 400, and at least 100 more perished from violence and ill-usage. A petition to the first parliament of Charles II. stated that 3179 had been imprisoned; the number rose to 4500 in 1662, the Fifth Monarchy outbreak, in which Friends were in no way concerned, being largely responsible for this increase. There is no evidence to show that they were in any way connected with any of the plots of the Commonwealth or Restoration periods. A petition to James II. in 1685 stated that 1460 were then in prison. Under the Quaker Act of 1662 and the Conventicle Act of 1664 a number were transported out of England, and under the last-named act and that of 1670 (the second Conventicle Act) hundreds of households were despoiled of all their goods. The penal laws under which Friends suffered may be divided chronologically into those of the Commonwealth and the Restoration periods. Under the former there were a few charges of plotting against the government. Several imprisonments, including that of George Fox at Derby in 1650-1651, were brought about under the Blasphemy Act of 1650, which inflicted penalties on any one who asserted himself to be very God or equal with God, a charge to which the Friends were peculiarly liable owing to their doctrine of perfection. After a royalist insurrection in 1655, a proclamation was issued announcing that persons suspected of Roman Catholicism would be required to take an oath abjuring the papal authority and transubstantiation. The Quakers, accused as they were of being Jesuits, and refusing to take the oath, suffered under this proclamation and under the more stringent act of 1656. A considerable number were flogged under the Vagrancy Acts (39 Eliz. c. 4; 7 Jac. I. c. 4), which were strained to cover the case of itinerant Quaker preachers. They also came under the provisions of the acts of 1644, 1650 and 1656 directed against travelling on the Lord's day. The interruption of preachers when celebrating divine service rendered the offender liable to three months' imprisonment under a statute of the first year of Mary, but Friends generally waited to speak till the service was over.[2] The Lord's Day