THE

YORKSHIREMAN,

A

RELIGIOUS AND LITERARY JOURNAL

BY A FRIEND.

PRO PATRIA.

No. XXXIII. FOURTH DAY, 13th ELEVENTH Mo. 1833. PRICE 4d.

ART. I.-A Chronological Summary of events and circumstances connected with the origin and progress of the doctrines and practices of the Quakers.

(Continued from p. 103.)

FULL

A. D. THE ROYALIST AND PRELATICAL PERSECUTION IN 1662-3 ACTIVITY. The Act of Uniformity in force on the 24th August in the Popish Calendar the day dedicated to St. Bartholomew, and before infamous for the matins of Paris,' or the orders of the French Court for the massacre of the Protestants, in 1572. Two thousand Non-conformist Ministers of the Church of England are displaced by this Act.

Of the leaders of the Society of Quakers we find, this year, in prison-George Fox at Leicester, by the arbitrary arrest of Lord Beaumont; Thomas Goodair and Benjamin Staples at Oxford, and Ambrose Rigge at Horsham, all three under sentence of premumire: George Whitehead, Richard Hubberthorn, and Edward Burrough in Newgate, London; where the two latter (with many others) are taken off by fever. Of the members at large, above four thousand in various gaols of the city and country, under severe suffering; which is also the general case, throughout the counties, of those at liberty, by personal illtreatment on occasion of their meeting for worship, and by distraints on their property. In the city of London, in the borough of Southwark and at Colchester more particularly, a constant warfare is kept up on Meeting days betwixt bands of armed assailants on one hand, and patient unresisting sufferers on the

A. D. other; till the latter for a season obtain the victory, and are left 1662-3 to hold their meetings unmolested. (a)

I shall not detain the Reader long on the subject of these sanguinary proceedings; the evident intent of which was, to drive this people to desperation, and, taking advantage of some act of violence on their part, to do military execution on some and send the remainder out of the country. Let the following specimens suffice, as to the violent breaking up of meetings; from large narratives, contained in the histories to which I refer.

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1. At London, on the last day of the 6th Month called August, Major Gen. Sir Richard Brown (mayor of London in 1660–1) came to the Bull and Mouth, to break up the Meeting; which had held about two hours, and the congregation was on the point of dispersing. His men entered with him, rushing and roaring, with their swords drawn', and began by making fast the door, as if they intended a massacre. But the plan of attack, it seems, was to knock them down indiscriminately, regarding neither age nor sex, and to drag them out one by one repeating the blows as they attempted to rise; till their blood was plentifully shed in the street, and the bye-standers (at the risk of the like treatment) cried shame upon the soldiers. But the latter answered that they had orders to kill, and that their muskets were charged with ball; some having been seen to chew their bullets.' (On another occasion thy had carbines with matches lighted; and seemed to expect resistance, saying it were better for them that the quakers did resist!) This was done for the space of two hours in the middle of the day, and repeated at the afternoon meeting; the sufferers not feeling themselves at liberty to disperse, or forbear their worship. Many, as might be supposed, were grievously cut and bruised; and one man, John Trowell soon died of the injuries he received. The fact being notorious (as the body was taken and laid out at the place in a few days time) a jury was summoned, and an inquest held-but though the evidence (including that of surgeons attending) was clear as to the cause of the man's death, yet the murderer not being to be indentified, and the city thus liable to a fine in case of a verdict against him as unknown, the matter was suspended, and at length let drop.

"An account of that day's barbarity, and this person's murder in particular, was printed and presented to the king, by one of those called quakers. To whom the king replied, I assure you it was not by my advice that any of your friends should be slain. You must tell the magistrates of the city of it, and prosecute the Law against them."" It was the red regiment of the trained bands of the city that had done the business, with the help of a papist, a great officer in the yellow regiment' which was not on duty that day. And an alderman commanded-against whom, with his band of ruffians and real fanatics, the sufferers were to bring their action! "But (continues the narrative) Richard Brown, hearing of the said paper being

Note.

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(a) Fox: Journal, 338. Sewel, i. 545--550, ii, 1—11. Whitehead, Ed. 1725, p.271--273. Besse's Suff. i. 199. Piety promoted, p. i.

spread, committed the author, who had put his name to it, to Newgate for dispersing scandalous papers, as he was pleased to call them.” Besse, vol. i, p. 386, quoting ، A Monthly Intelligence relating to the affairs of the people called quakers in and near the city of London, concerning the violence and persecution, daily brought forth against them, from the 1st day of the 6th month called August, until the 1st day of the 7th month called September, 1662.'

The murder, however, had produced such a sensation among the Citizens, that something was done, somewhere, in the way of intercession: and the meetings were held peaceably for about six weeks afterwards: about two hundred quakers had in this tumultuary and violent manner been committed to the gaols of London and Westminster.

2. In Southwark, in 1662, about eighty were sent at different times, from the meeting at Horslydown, to prison; seven of whom died of sickness there contracted. Thirty two were tried at Margaret's hill in October, and thirteen in November: most of these were sentenced to abjure the realm, or be treated as felons.

“ In 1663, on the 9th of the month called August, the first of the week, a company of soldiers headed by a serjeant came to the meeting at Horselydown, and as they entered fired their muskets; then they fell to beating and abusing those there met, and drove many of them by violence to their guard. Thus they proceeded for several meetings successively, knocking down many with their muskets, sorely bruising them; and cutting others over their heads and faces with their naked swords. Some of them having their muskets charged with powder, held the muzzles close to the women, and firing them burnt their clothes and scorched their bodies. Others brake their swords and staves with the blows which they inhumanly laid on, without distinction of age or sex.-' –This kind of barbarity was exercised for near a month together [we may conclude twice in each week] by part of that called the king's regiment, and afterwards by a party of Gen. Monk's own regiment, nothing inferior to the others in cruelty." (6)

3. At Colchester in 1663, William Moore, then mayor, exerted his utmost authority to suppress them :' at first coming himself with the civil power, but this failing, employed ، a party of the County troop, to assail them from meeting to meeting on First and Fourth days, through the winter of this year [O. S.] from the beginning of November to the end of February. When the soldiers had broken the forms and windows, and kept them out of the house, they met in the street in the cold and rain; not daring to decline their duty for those inconveniences. I shall not particularize the cruelties exercised on those Friends (in the manner of a regular siege and assault) some of which on one occasion falling on Solomon Freemantle, a merchant, his wife, fearing lest he should be killed, fell down upon his body and received many blows upon. her own. And a trooper, losing his blade out of the hilt, the man he was beating took it up, saying I will give it thee up again: I desire the Lord may not lay this day's work to thy charge!"

(b) Besse's Sufferings, vol. i, p. 690

Giles Barnardiston, a man of note and a preacher, brought up at one of the Universities and formerly a Colonel (whose peaceful end see in 'Piety Promoted' part 1.) willingly bore his share of suffering in this storm of persecution: in which the actors at length grew weary and ashamed; and contented themselves with taking numbers off to prison. It would be easy to double the length of this article, by going briefly through the more remarkable cases in the several counties, in the first volume of the Sufferings.' At Bristol, John Knight, mayor, 'pursued the quakers as earnestly as if the prosecution of them had been the chief business of his office.' In Cornwall, a major Robinson, who made it his diversion to harass the quakers, calling it Fanatichunting, and inviting his neighbours to it as to the sports of the field, now came to a miserable end: being killed by his own bull, with which he must needs go to fencing.

Other instances occur of sudden deaths of such persons, and other calamities befalling them. In Gloucestershire we have a curious account of the inquisitorial examination of Thomas Atkin at Dursley, by the Bishop on a visitation. In Lancashire, the case of Oliver Atherton is remarkable; who was imprisoned to death for tithes by an implacable countess, herself in her grave a few weeks after him. In Northamptonshire towards the end of 1663, twenty two friends, having been long confined with ten debtors and felons 'in a close room,' a violent fever seized on some of the latter; to whom the Friends I thought it their duty to be assistant in their extreme weakness — but the air growing still worse they too fell sick, and only four being able to appear at the assizes, the Judge gave a private order to the gaoler to let them go forth for air, by which means some recovered; but seven of them, being too weak to go out or be removed, died there!'-Such was prison-inspection, in those days. The names, and dates of the decease of the sufferers are given by Besse under 1664; and I cannot suppress the testimony of the historian to their religious character. John Samm, a faithful minister of the gospel,' was

among them.

'These all finished their course in peace, and departed in full assurance of faith, having their hope and confidence firm in the Lord; by whose power they had witnessed Redemption from a vain conversation, and who had armed them with the patience of the saints, to undergo tribulations and afflictions for the testimony he had called them to bear-who supported them with the consolations of his Spirit, and enabled them in the midst of their afflictions to sing praises unto him, and to bless his name; to the edification and comfort one of another, and to the astonishment of others who beheld their piety and patience.' Besse, vol. i. p. 533.

In Oxfordshire, Thomas Minchin, a poor blind man of Burford, was prosecuted in the Bishop's court, and by a writ upon excommunication, sent at the end of 1663 to Oxford gaol, where he lay eight years and a half. The priest of Burford, who published his excommunication, about half a year after was suddenly struck blind in his pulpit, and continued so till his death. Id. p. 569.

I have detailed some particulars connected with this persecution in my first volume, p. 26, 61, 74, 84, 97, 102; and in particular, the trial of John Crook and others before the Lord Mayor of London, 1662 but it may be right here to enquire, whether any particular act or proceeding of the society, about this time, could have so provoked the jealousy of the Ecclesiastical authorities, as to induce them, after the king had disappointed their purpose for a time, by a general release of the prisoners, to have recourse to the city magistrates and the trained bands, to execute their vengence anew. It appears to me, that peculiar provocation may have been given by the appearance in the Metropolitan see, of a new presbytery and a new religious discipline. Friends had by this time established at their meeting at the Bull and Mouth the practice, in substance, which has continued ever since in the Monthly meetings of the society: and I shall subjoin to this article a document (with a few remarks on it) of the nature of a charge, given to that Monthly Meeting, by the Ministers in London, on the subject of its duties. It is somewhat long, but incapable of abridgement; and such as feel interested in the history of our society, will undoubtedly peruse it with interest.

(To be continued.)

ART. II.-A Testimony concerning the beginning of the work of the Lord, and the first publication of Truth in this city of London; and also concerning the cause, end, and service, of the first appointment and setting up of the men's meeting at the Bull and Mouth; that it may be known to all perfectly, how the Lord hath begun and carried on his work to this day. [1662].

It having pleased the Lord God of heaven and earth by his Spirit and power to move the hearts and spirits of divers of us, the ministers of his everlasting gospel of truth and salvation, to come to this great city of London, to publish and declare the message of eternal life; which we had received power from the Father to do, that people might be warned of the day of their visitation, and turned from darkness to the light, and from satan's power to God, and be converted to the knowledge of the ways of salvation, that their souls might live testimony was and is the same as ever was held forth by the holy prophets and apostles of old) to which moving of the Lord in us obedient, and though in much weakness, and not without many trials, tribulations and difficulties, we entered this city, and as the wisdom of God prepared our way we began to publish and declare the things of the kingdom of God, as we had received the gift thereof in power and authority; to the wounding and piercing of many consciences, and to the quickening and awakening of the witness of God in many hearts; as is well known to the faithful this day:

(for our

we were