land or to Holland; those who by their contracts with the companies were bound to remain fled from evils they could bear no longer to Maryland and Virginia, or wherever else they could find a refuge. The burgomasters of Amsterdam more than once proposed to reconvey to the Company their interest in a colony which had become a burden and a reproach, for it was said of New Amstel that it gained "such a bad name that the whole river would not wash it out."

CHAPTER VIII.

QUAKERISM IN NEW ENGLAND.

ORIGIN OF THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS IN ENGLAND. GEORGE FOX.- HIS LIFE, CHARACTER, AND TEACHINGS. - BELIEFS OF THE FRIENDS. THEIR MANNER OF LIFE AND SPEECH. THE FRIENDS AND THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH. ORIGIN OF NAME "QUAKERS." - ARRIVAL OF THE FIRST FRIENDS AT BOSTON. ACTION OF THE BOSTON MAGISTRATES. THE PERSECUTION OF THE QUAKERS BEGUN. — - AcCESSIONS TO THEIR NUMBER. THE FIRST GENERAL LAWS AGAINST THEM. REFUSAL OF RHODE ISLAND TO JOIN IN THIS LEGISLATION. -MARY DYER.- BANISHED FRIENDS RETURN TO BOSTON. - INCREASED STRINGENCY OF THE LAWS. PROCEEDINGS AT NEW HAVEN AND ELSEWHERE. -THE DEATH PENALTY IN MASSACHUSETTS.-CASES OF PERSECUTION. MARY DYER AND HER COMPANIONS AT BOSTON. THEIR TRIAL AND PUNISHMENT. - OTHER TRIALS. INTERFERENCE OF THE KING. END OF THE PERSECUTIONS.

A lull in ligious con

Quakerism

appears in

Massachu

setts. Its

AFTER the Rev. John Clark and his companion Crandall had been punished in 1651, for their visit to Lynn, and the Rev. Obadiah Holmes had been whipped for the same offence, the i church of Boston enjoyed rest for a season. Perhaps the troversies. word enjoyment carries with it a flavor too positive to be associated with the men whose temper tasted a fierce delight in controversy, and who might therefore be imagined as pining while heresy was inactive. At any rate they were not long left without a fresh and peculiarly grateful opportunity. This came with the first appearance of Quakerism in Massachusetts; and the facts must be prefaced by a brief account of the origin and purport of that form of religion. In the summer of 1651 Cromwell was getting ready to win the battle of Worcester against Scotch Presbyterians, royalists, and Charles Stuart. George Fox was lying in the House of Correction at Derby, committed, as Justices Bennet and Barton said, for the "avowed uttering and broaching of divers blasphemous opinions contrary to a late act of Parliament." While there in durance he was pestered by Justice Bennett to enlist and take part in the coming campaign. There seems always to have been a great opinion of his steadiness, power of command, and sway over men. The Parliament soldiers were once very angry with him because he

origin.

George Fox.

declined their offer of a colonelcy; and it led to his being thrown into a vile hole in a jail. But he would not purchase his liberty of Justice Bennett on those terms. "I told him that I was brought off from outward wars. After a while the constables fetched me up again, and brought me before the commissioners, who said I should go for a soldier." Probably a general jail-delivery was going on at this time of all promising subjects, debtors and otherwise, not absolute malefactors, to recruit the army. "But I told them that I was dead to it. They said I was alive." Truly, never was any man more so, and more valiant with all the essential qualities of a soldier. We shall see that disciples of his brought over his stiffness and heroic patience to America.

Fox's life

ter.

George Fox was born at Drayton-in-the-Clay, in Leicestershire, in 1624. His father's name was Christopher, and the neighbors and charac- for good reason called him "Righteous Christer." The son George described himself as a grave and staid child, rather disliking that lightness and gayety of demeanor which he was always disposed to consider wanton. His youth was pure and righteous. They tried to make a minister of him, but, like Jacob Behmen, he became a cobbler. It was a habit of his to say Verily" in all his dealings; so that people said, "If George says Verily, there is no al

66

.

1643.]

GEORGE FOX.

167

His doubts

dency.

tering him." 1 At nineteen he was, with a cousin, drinking beer in a company which insisted that he who refused to drink healths should pay the whole score. Fox refused the wanton drinking, and retired, and from that day he broke off all familiarity with his relations, old and young, and fell into great despondency and spiritual trouble which lasted for some time. "I went," he said, and despon"to many a priest to look for comfort, but found no comfort from them." One of them advised him to get rid of his megrims by singing psalms and smoking tobacco. But Fox had neither ear nor voice, and took no pleasure in "drinking the shameful," as the Wahabees style the custom which Raleigh imported into England. He went to see a very experienced adviser in spiritual matters, and "found him only like an empty hollow cask." Walking in the garden with another minister, imparting the secret ailment to him, he happened to put his foot into a flower-bed, whereupon the man of God fell into a great rage, and dispensed with the use of consolatory phrases. Another minister thought he needed physic and blood-letting, but Fox says that no blood could come out of him, so dried up was his body with sorrow. He avoided Christmas gayeties and marriage feasts, and began to seek out the company of widows and poor persons, to minister to their low estate.

The dawn of

belief.

Walking in a field on a Sunday morning the Lord opened to him that a man need not be bred at the University in order to be a minister of Christ. It was a new idea to him; as new as his new it was to the great majority of Englishmen. It struck at the whole hierarchy of ministers. At another time he was impressed that God dwelt in people's hearts and not in the "steeple-houses." From that time forward the sound of the Sunday bells struck at his life "at the very hearing of it," and he obeyed its summons to go to church for the purpose of clearing his conscience to the priest and the parish. He fasted, wandered in solitary places, sat with his Bible in hollow trees where it was too lonesome for mankind; walked at night, and gave himself up to the workings of that mingled imagination and spiritual feeling which he perceived to be the direct working of the Lord. "I saw the great love of God, and I was filled with admiration at the infinitude of it." "When at any time my condition was vailed" as it frequently was by the conflict between his old conventional beliefs and this new spontaneity "my secret belief was stayed firm, and hope underneath held me, as an anchor in the bottom of the sea, and anchored my immortal soul to its Bishop, causing it to swim above the sea, the world, where all the raging waves, foul weather, tempests, and temptations are."

1 Journal of George Fox, edited by Wilson Armistead.

Beginning of his preaching.

Then everything that was carnal and unrighteous was manifested to him in this inner light which dawned beyond his ordinary mornings. And he saw the mountains burning up, "and the rubbish, the rough and crooked ways and places, made smooth and plain, that the Lord might come into his tabernacle." People soon began to come from far and near to listen to his prophecy. He dealt largely in symbols, and seemed to be endowed with an imagination like that of William Blake, the poet and artist, who earned, in our time, the reputation of insanity by believing in the external reality of his inward visions. Like Blake, Fox had an eye which translated into instantaneous solidity the imagery of his feeling. Sitting in a friend's house, he saw there was a great crack about to split the earth, and "a great smoke to go as the crack went,” and a great shaking to follow the path of the crack. It was the earth in people's hearts. Walking through the main street of Litchfield he saw a channel of blood running down, and the marketplace a pool of blood. Once he met Cromwell riding into Hampton Court, and before he came to him he saw a waft of death go forth against him, "and when I came to him he looked like a dead man.” No doubt the Protector did so look, about a fortnight before his death in 1658, when George Fox met him.

So John Woolman saw one day "a mass of matter of a dull, gloomy color, between the south and the east," and was informed that it was the misery of all human beings, and that he formed a part of it. Afterward he heard a pure and ravishing voice, as of an angel speaking to other angels, and saying, "John Woolman is dead;" but knowing perfectly well that he was alive, he greatly wondered what the heavenly voice could mean. But it meant, "I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." It was the death and surrender of his own will.

The Quaker doctrine of self-abnega

tion

No mystics of the Middle Ages ever believed more profoundly than the early Quakers in that absolute self-abnegation and annihilation of the individual which secured to the Divine will a free course through their souls. This was a prime doctrine of Quakerism. In the strength of it they abjured all personal preferences, hazarded the prejudice and wrath of their opponents, breathed sweet air in the foulness of dungeons, where they had to lie with the mouth close to the crack beneath their cell door, to keep the beatified life in their bodies; the doctrine dulled the smart of the lash, made the hangman's noose sit lightly, and soothed the bruises of stonings and cudgellings.

With this lively outwardness of George Fox's imagination there was combined a sense of inward discernment, a spiritual touch for the