Quakers.
The sect of “Friends,” who were called Quakers in derision, was founded at about the middle of the seventeenth century.
At first they were called “Professors (or children) of the light,” because of their fundamental principle that the light of
Christ within was God's gift of salvation—that “Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.”
It is said that
George Fox (q. v.), the founder of the sect, when brought before magistrates at
Derby, England, in 1650,
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told them to “quake before the
Lord,” when one of them (
Gervase Bennet) caught up the word “quake,” and was the first who called the sect “Quakers.”
They were generally known by that name afterwards.
They spread rapidly in
England, and were severely persecuted by the
Church and State.
At one time there were 4,000 of them in loathsome prisons in
England.
The most prominent of
Fox's disciples was
William Penn, who did much to alleviate their sufferings.
Many died in prison or from the effects of imprisonment.
Grievous fines were imposed, a large portion of which went to informers.
They were insulted by the lower classes; their women and children were dragged by the hair along the streets; their meetinghouses were robbed of their windows; and, by order of King Charles and the Arch-
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A Quaker at the Court of Charles II. |
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bishop of
Canterbury, in 1670, their meeting-houses were pulled down; and when they gathered for worship beside the ruins they were beaten over the head by soldiers and dispersed.
In this way many were killed outright or disabled for life.
Constables and informers broke into their houses.
The value of their property destroyed before the accession of William and Mary (1689) was estimated at $5,000,000. Besides this, they were fined to the amount of over $80,000, and their goods were continually seized because they refused to pay tithes, bear arms, or enroll themselves in the military force of the country.
“The purity of their lives, the patience with which they endured insult and persecution (never returning evil for evil), their zeal, their devotedness, and their love for each other often compelled the admiration even of magistrates whose orders oppressed them.”
To escape persecution, many of them emigrated to the Continent, and some to the
West Indies and
North America.
In the latter places they found persecutors.
Those who first appeared in
New England and endured persecution there were fanatical and aggressive, and were not true representatives of the sect in
England.
They were among the earliest of the disciples of
Fox, whose enthusiasm led their judgment; and some of them were absolutely lunatics and utterly unlike the sober-minded, mildmannered members of that society to-day.
They ran into the wildest extravagances of speech; openly reviling magistrates and ministers of the Gospel with intemperate language; overriding the rights of all others in maintaining their own; making the most exalted pretensions to the exclusive possession of the gifts of the
Holy Spirit; scorned all respect for human laws; mocked the institutions of the country; and two or three fanatical young women outraged decency by appearing without clothing in the churches and in the streets, as emblems of the “unclothed souls of the people” ; while others, with loud voices, proclaimed that the wrath of the Almighty was about to fall like destructive lightning upon
Boston and
Salem.
This conduct, and these indecencies, caused the passage of severe laws in
Massachusetts against the Quakers.
The first of the sect who appeared there were
Mary Fisher and
Ann Austin, who arrived at
Boston from
Barbadoes in September (
N. S.), 1656.
Their trunks were searched, and their books were burned by the common hangman before they were allowed to land.
Cast into prison, their persons were stripped in a search for body-marks of witches.
None were found,
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and they, being mild-mannered women, and innocent, were soon released and expelled from
Massachusetts as “heretics.”
Nine other men and women who came from
London were similarly treated.
Others “sought martyrdom” in
New England and found it. Some reviled, scolded, and denounced the authorities in Church and State, railing at the functionaries from windows as they passed by. More and more severe were the laws passed against the Quakers.
They were banished on pain of death.
Three of them who returned were led to the scaffold—two young men and
Mary Dyer, widow of the secretary of
state of Rhode Island.
The young men were hanged; Mary was reprieved and sent back to
Rhode Island.
The next spring she returned to
Boston, defied the laws, and was hanged.
The severity of the laws caused a revulsion in public feeling.
True Friends who came stoutly maintained their course with prudence, and were regarded by thoughtful persons as real martyrs for consciencea sake.
A demand for the repeal of the bloody enactments caused their repeal in 1661, when the fanaticism of both parties subsided and a more Christian spirit prevailed.
In
Virginia, laws almost as severe as those in
Massachusetts were enacted against the Quakers.
In
Maryland, also, where religious toleration was professed, they were punished as “vagabonds” who persuaded people not to perform required public duties.
In
Rhode Island they were not interfered with, and those who sought martyrdom did not go there.
Some of them who did so disgusted
Roger Williams that he tried to argue them out of the colony.
In September, 1656, the authorities of
Massachusetts addressed to
President Arnold, of
Rhode Island, an urgent letter, protesting against the toleration of Quakers allowed there, and intimating that, unless it was discontinued, it would be resented by total non-intercourse.
There was then very little sympathy felt for the Quakers in
Rhode Island, but the authorities refused to persecute them, and
Coddington and others afterwards joined them.
Governor Stuyvesant was a strict churchman, and guarded, as far as possible, the purity of the ritual and doctrines of the Reformed Dutch Church in
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Persecuting a Quaker. |
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New Netherland.
He compelled the Lutherans to conform, and did not allow other sects to take root there.
In 1657 a ship arrived at New Amsterdam, having on board several of “the accursed sect called Quakers.”
They had been banished from
Boston, and were on their way from
Barbadoes to
Rhode Island, “where all kinds of scum dwell,” wrote Dominie Megapolenses, “for it is nothing else than a sink of
New England.”
Among the Friends were
Dorothy Waugh and
Mary Witherhead.
They went from street to street in New Amsterdam, preaching their new doctrine to the gathered people.
Stuyvesant ordered the women to be seized and cast into prison, where, for eight days, they were imprisoned in dirty, vermininfested cells, with their hands tied behind them, when they were sent on board the ship in which they came, to be transported to
Rhode Island.
Robert Hodgson, who determined to remain in New Netherland, took up his abode at
Hempstead, where a few Quakers were quietly settled.
There he held a meeting, and
Stuyvesant ordered him to his prison at New Amsterdam.
Tied to the tail of a cart wherein sat two young women, offenders like himself, he was driven by a band of soldiers during the night through the woods to the city, where he was imprisoned in “a filthy jail,” under sentence of such confinement for two years, to pay a heavy fine, and to have his days spent in hard labor, chained to a wheel-barrow with a negro, who lashed him with a heavy tarred rope.
He was subjected to other cruel treatment at the hands of the governor, until the
Dutch people, as well as the
English, cried “Shame!”
There were no other persecutions of the Friends in New Netherland after
Hodgson's release.
The executions of
Mary Dyer in 1660 and
William Leddra in 1661, both in
Boston, caused an amazing addition to the number of converts to Quakerism.
The same year monthly meetings were established in several places in
New England, and not long afterwards quarterly meetings were organized.
On hearing of the death of Leddra, Charles II.
sent an order to
Endicott to stop the persecutions and to send all accused persons to
England for trial.
This order was sent by the hand of
Samuel Shattuck.
a banished
Quaker, who appeared before
Governor Endicott with his hat on. The incensed governor was about to take the usual brutal steps to send him to prison, after ordering an officer to remove
Shattuck's hat, when the latter handed the magistrate the order from the throne.
Endicott was thunderstruck.
He handed back
Shattuck's hat and removed his own in deference to the presence of the
King's messenger.
He read the papers, and, directing
Shattuck to withdraw, simply remarked, “We shall obey his Majesty's commands.”
A hurried conference was held with the other magistrates and ministers.
They dared not send the accused persons to
England, for they would be swift witnesses against the authorities of
Massachusetts; so they ordered
William Sutton, keeper of the
Boston jail, to set all the Quakers free.
So ended their severe persecution in
New England; but the magistrates continued for some time to whip
Quaker men and women, half naked, through the streets of
Boston and
Salem, until peremptorily forbidden to do so by the
King.
After
Massachusetts had suspended its laws against Quakers, Parliament made a law (1662) which provided that every live Quakers, meeting for religious worship, should be fined, for the first offence, $25; for the second offence, $50; and for the third offence to abjure the realm on oath, or be transported to the
American colonies.
Many refused to take the oath, and were transported.
By an act of the Virginia legislature, passed in 1662, every master of a vessel who should import a Quaker, unless such as had been shipped from
England under the above act, was subjected to a fine of 5,000 lbs. of tobacco for the first offence.
Severe laws against other sectaries were passed in
Virginia, and many of the Non-conformists in that colony, while
Berkeley ruled, fled deep into the wilderness to avoid persecution.
Because the Friends refused to perform military duty or take an oath in
Maryland they were subject to fines and imprisonment, but were not persecuted there on account of their religious views.
When, in 1676,
George Fox was in
Maryland, his preaching was not hindered.
He might be seen on the shores of the
Chesapeake,
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preaching at the evening twilight, when the labors of the day were over, to a multitude of people, comprising members of the legislature and other distinguished men of the province, yeomen, and large groups of
Indians, with chiefs and sachems, their wives and children, all led by their emperor.
Fenwick, one of the purchasers of
west Jersey, made the first settlement of members of his sect at
Salem.
Liberal offers were made to Friends in
England if they would settle in
New Jersey, where they would be free from persecution, and in 1677 several hundred came over.
In March a company of 230 came in the ship
Kent.
Before they sailed
King.
Charles gave them his blessing.
the
Kent reached New York in August, with commissioners to manage publie affairs in
New Jersey.
The arrival was reported to
Andros, who was governor of New York, and claimed political jurisdiction over the Jerseys.
Fenwick, who denied the jurisdiction of the
Duke of
York in the collection of customs duties, was then in custody at New York, but was allowed to depart with the other Friends, on his own recognizance to answer in the autumn.
On Aug. 16 the
Kent arrived at
New Castle, but it was three months before a permanent place was settled upon.
That place was on the
Delaware River, and was first named
Beverly.
Afterwards it was called Bridlington, after a parish in
Yorkshire, England, whence many of the emigrants had come.
The name was corrupted to
Burlington, which it still bears.
There the passengers of the
Kent settled, and were soon joined by many
others.
The village prospered, and other settlements were made in its vicinity.
Nearly all the settlers in
west Jersey were members of the Society of Friends, or Quakers.
One of the earliest erected buildings for the public worship of Friends in
New Jersey was at
Crosswicks, about half-way between
Allentown and the
Delaware River.
Before the Revolution they built a spacious meeting-house there of imported brick.
From the founding of the government of
Pennsylvania the rule of the colony was held by the Quakers, they being more numerous than others.
When wars with the
French and
Indians afflicted the colo-
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nies their peace principles made the members of the Assembly of that sect oppose appropriations of men and money for war purposes.
When, in 1755, the frontiers of
Pennsylvania were seriously threatened, the Quakers, though still a majority in the Assembly, could no longer resist the loud cry “To arms” in
Philadelphia and re-echoed from the frontiers.
The hostile
Indians were among the
Juniata settlements.
The proprietary party successfully stirred up the people.
After a sharp struggle, the Assembly, in consideration of a voluntary subscription of £ 5,000 by the proprietaries, consented to levy a tax of £ 50.000, from which the estates of the latter were exempted.
The expenditure of the amount was intrusted to a committee of seven, of whom a majority were members of the Assembly; and these became the managers of the war, now formally declared, against the Delawares and Shawnees.
So the golden chain of friendship which bound the Indians to
William Penn was first broken.
This was the first time the Quakers were driven into an open participation in war. Some of the more conscientious resigned their seats in the Assembly, and others declined a re-election.
So it was that, in 1755, the rule of the Quakers in the administration of public affairs in
Pennsylvania came to an end.
The “Testimony” of Friends, or Quakers, at their yearly meeting in
Philadelphia in May, 1775, against the movements of the
American patriots attracted special attention to that body.
The papers and records of their yearly meeting in
New Jersey, captured by
Sullivan in his expedition against the loyalist regiments on
Staten Island, gave Congress the first proof of the general disaffection of the society.
The Congress recommended the executives of the several colonies or States to watch their movements; and the executive council of
Pennsylvania were earnestly exhorted to arrest and secure the persons of eleven of the leading men of that
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society in
Philadelphia, whose names were given.
It was done, Aug. 28, 1777, and
John Fisher,
Abel James,
James Pemberton, Henry Drinker,
Israel Pemberton,
John Pemberton,
John James,
Samuel Pleasants,
Thomas Wharton, Sr.,
Thomas Fisher, and
Samuel Fisher, leading members, were banished to
Fredericksburg, Va. The reason given by Congress for this act was that when the enemy were pressing on towards
Philadelphia in December, 1777, a certain seditious publication, addressed “To our Friends and Brethren in Religious Profession in these and the adjacent Provinces,” signed
John Pemberton, in and on behalf of the “Meeting of sufferings,” held in
Philadelphia, Dec. 26, 1776, had been widely circulated among Friends throughout the States.
At the same time the
Congress instructed the board of war to send to
Fredericksburg John Penn, the governor, and
Benjamin Chew,
chief-justice of
Pennsylvania, for safe custody.
While the
British army was in
Philadelphia in 1778,
Joseph Galloway, an active Tory, and others employed
John Roberts and
Abraham Carlisle, members of the Society of Friends, as secret agents in detecting foes to the
British government.
Carlisle was a sort of inquisitorgeneral, watching at the entrances to the city, pointing out and causing the arrest of Whigs, who were first cast into prison and then granted permission to pass the lines.
Both
Roberts and
Carlisle acted as guides to British expeditions when they went out of
Philadelphia to fall upon and massacre their countrymen.
These facts being laid before Congress, that body caused the arrest of
Roberts and
Carlisle.
They were tried, found guilty, and hanged.
