Читать книгу Historic Sites of Lancashire and Cheshire - James Croston - Страница 11

MEETING BETWEEN FOX AND CROMWELL.

Cromwell died on the 3rd September; and in little more than one short month Fox lost another, and that his truest, friend. For some time previously the health of Judge Fell had been declining; on the 8th of October he passed away from the scene of his earthly labours, and a few days later was buried by torchlight in a grave under his family pew, in the old church of St. Mary, at Ulverston.

Writing long afterwards, his widow, Margaret Fell, thus recorded her loss:—

We lived together 26 years, in which time we had nine children, and one that sought after God in the best way that was made known to him. He was much esteemed in this country, and valued and honoured in his day, by all sorts of people, for his justice, wisdom, moderation, and mercy.... He was about 60 years of age. He left one son and seven daughters, all unpreferred; but left a good and competent estate for them.[4]

By his will, which bears date September 23, 1658, he left various legacies in trust for poor and aged persons in the parishes of Ulverston and Dalton, and also for the maintenance of a schoolmaster at Ulverston. Among other bequests is one to his "very honourable and noble friend, the Lord Bradshaw" (John Bradshaw, the regicide), of "ten pounds to buy a ring therewith, whom I humbly beseech to accept thereof as all the acknowledgment I can make, and thankfulness for his ancient and continued favours and kindness undeservedly vouchsafed unto me since our first acquaintance." Bradshaw did not live long to wear the memento of the departed judge's friendship, for within a year he had found a grave in the mausoleum of kings at Westminster.

Under the provisions of Thomas Fell's will, Swarthmoor Hall, with its appurtenances and fifty acres of land, were reserved to the use of his widow during the remainder of her life, or until such times as she should marry again, when the property was to pass to Daniel Abraham, the husband of his daughter Rachel. Mrs. Fell remained in the occupancy of the old mansion, and the meetings of the Friends were held in the house weekly, as they had been during the judge's lifetime. It was not, however, until after the Restoration that George Fox paid another visit to the place. In 1660, he returned from the south, and, after holding a general meeting for all the Friends in Westmoreland, Cumberland, and Lancashire at Arnside, he proceeded once more into Furness, and took up his abode at Swarthmoor; but he had scarcely done so when Major Porter, then mayor of Lancaster, issued a warrant for his apprehension. He was forcibly carried away from the hall to the constable's house at Ulverston, where he remained for the night; and the following morning was conveyed across the sands to Lancaster, when he was committed by Porter on the charge of being "an enemy to the King, and that he had endeavoured to raise a new war, and imbrue the nation in blood again." In vindication of his innocence, Fox denied that he was "a disturber of the nation's peace;" and affirmed that he was "never an enemy to the King, nor to any man's person upon the earth." Margaret Fell, who considered that an injustice was done to herself by his removal from her house, also addressed a letter of remonstrance to "all the magistrates concerned in his wrong taking up and imprisoning;" and, failing to obtain redress, determined on proceeding to London, in order that her case might be laid before the King.

"Having a great family," she says in her "Testimony," "and he being taken in my house, I was moved of the Lord to go to the King at Whitehall; and took with me a declaration, and an information, of our principles; and a long time, and much ado, I had to get to him. But, at last, when I got to him, I told him if he was guilty of these things, I was guilty, for he was taken in my house; and I gave him the paper of our principles, and desired that he would set him at liberty, as he had promised that none should suffer for tender consciences; and we were of tender consciences, and desired nothing but the liberty of our consciences. Then, with much ado, after he had been kept prisoner near half a year at Lancaster, we got a Habeas Corpus, and removed him to the King's Bench, when he was released."

To send the delinquent Quaker all the way to London guarded by a party of horse was a serious matter, and after much deliberation George Chetham, of Clayton and Turton Tower—a nephew of Humphrey, the founder of the Chetham Hospital at Manchester—who was then sheriff, to avoid the expense of conducting his prisoner, liberated him on his promise to appear before the judges in town on a day fixed. From Lancaster he went straight to Swarthmoor, where he stayed two or three days; and then set out for London, passing through Cheshire and Staffordshire, and holding meetings at several places on the way. When he arrived in London "multitudes of people," he says, "were gathered together to see the burning of the bowels of some of the old King's (Charles I.) judges, who had been hung, drawn, and quartered." The following morning he proceeded to the King's Bench, and, pulling out of his pocket the writ charging him with embroiling the nation in blood and making a new war, presented it to the judges, who, as may be supposed, were a good deal astonished and amused at the inconsistency of paroling a prisoner accounted such a dangerous personage, and permitting him to travel a distance of 250 miles without guard or restraint. None of his accusers appearing, and there being nothing sufficiently serious to warrant his committal, the matter was referred to the King, who at once gave orders for his release.

In the summer of 1663 Fox was again at Swarthmoor, when, after a brief stay, he went over to Arnside to attend a meeting, and thence travelled through Northumberland and Cumberland, returning to the hospitable home of Mrs. Fell in the autumn of the same year. On his arrival he was informed that Colonel Kirkby, a neighbouring justice and a member of Parliament, had, on the preceding day, sent his officers to search the house in the expectation of finding Fox there. Undismayed, Fox went the next morning to the colonel's house, Kirkby Hall, when he found the Flemings, of Rydal, and several other of the neighbouring gentry assembled to take leave of the colonel before his departure to London to attend to his Parliamentary duties. Fox, in the presence of the company, asked if there was any charge against him; and he was told, in reply, that "as he," Colonel Kirkby, "was a gentleman, he had nothing against him. But," he added, "Mistress Fell must not keep great meetings at her house, for they meet contrary to the Act."[5] A few days later he was again apprehended and conveyed to Holker Hall, the residence of Justice Preston, the brave-hearted Margaret Fell accompanying him; when, after being examined, he was ordered to appear at the sessions at Lancaster. He then returned with Mrs. Fell to Swarthmoor; and shortly afterwards, while the Friends were peaceably assembled at a meeting in the hall, the door was opened, and William Kirkby, of Adgarley, a half-brother to Colonel Kirkby, entered with the constables, exclaiming, "How now, Mr. Fox! You have a fine company here!" and at once proceeded to take the names of those present; any who refused being handed over to the custody of the officers. This proceeding led to Margaret Fell herself being examined and committed for trial. Having traversed from the spring assizes, she was brought up on the 29th June, 1664, her chief offence being that of having had meetings for worship in her house at Swarthmoor. It would appear from the evidence she had received an intimation that, on her giving security to discontinue the meetings, the prosecution would be abandoned; and the offer was again made that, if she would give the required security, the case against her would be dismissed. But she refused, and the jury found for the King. A respite was allowed; but, she remaining obstinate, sentence of premunire was passed against her in September of the same year, and she was committed to prison, where she remained until the summer of 1668. Fox, who was also a prisoner for being a "rebel" and a dangerous character, was for a time more successful, his shrewdness and acumen enabling him to discover several errors in the indictment; but he was immediately questioned again, the oath was tendered and refused, and, being once more put upon trial, he traversed to the next assizes. The sufferings of both were very severe; each prisoner wrote an account of their trials, and the descriptions they give furnish some interesting particulars respecting the condition of the prison at Lancaster at the time. From the narrative of Margaret Fell it appears that, after her trial, the judge said:—"Mistress Fell, you wrote to me concerning your prisons, that they are bad and rain in, and are not fit for people to lie in; and (she says) I answered, the sheriff doth know, and hath been told of it several times; and now it is raining, if you will send to see, at this present, you may see whether they be fit for people to lie in or no. And Colonel Kirkby stood up and spoke to the judge to excuse the sheriff and the badness of the room, and I spoke to him, and said if you were to lie in it yourselves you would think it hard; but your minds is only in cruelty to commit others, as William Kirkby hath done, who hath committed ten of our friends, and put them into a cold room, where there are nothing but bare boards to lie on, where they have laid several nights, some of them old ancient men, above three score years of age, and known to be honest men in their country where they live. And when William Kirkby was asked why they might not have liberty to shift for themselves for beds, he answered and said, they were to commit them to prison, but not to provide prisons for them. And we asked him who should do it, then? and he said the King; and then the judge spoke to him, and said, they should not do so, but let them have prisons fit for men." George Fox also made complaint. He says:—"I desired the judge to send some to see my prison, being so bad, they would put no creature they had in it, it was so windy and rainy; and so I was had away to my prison, and some justices, with Colonel Kirkby, went up to see it; and when they came up in it, they durst scarcely go in it, it was so bad, rainy, and windy, and the badness of the floor, and others that came up said it was ... I being removed out of the prison I was in formerly; and so Colonel Kirkby told me I should be removed from that place ere long." While lying in this deplorable state in the gaol at Lancaster, he says he was so starved with cold and rain that his body became greatly swelled, and his limbs much benumbed. Well might Macaulay say of those times, "The prisons were hells on earth, seminaries of every crime and of every disease. At the assizes the lean and yellow culprits brought with them from their cells to the dock an atmosphere of stench and pestilence which sometimes avenged them signally on bench, bar, and jury."

After some time Fox was transferred from Lancaster to the castle at Scarborough, where, during his incarceration, he was visited by the widow of General Fairfax. His condition there was no better than at Lancaster. The room in which he was placed, he says, "being to the seaside, and lying much open, drove in the wind forcibly, so that the rain came over my bed and ran over the room, that I was fain to skim it up with a platter. And when my clothes were wet I had no fire to dry them; so that my body was benumbed with cold and my fingers swelled, that one was grown as big as two." His friends were forbidden to supply him with any comforts, and he remarks, "Commonly a threepenny loaf served me three weeks and sometimes longer, and most of my drink was water with wormwood steeped or bruised in it."

GATEWAY, LANCASTER CASTLE.

After he had been two years in confinement an order for his release was obtained from the King, procured, as it would seem, through the influence of a friend at Court, one "Esquire Marsh," to whom he had been long known, and who declared that, if necessary, "he would go a hundred miles barefoot for the liberty of George Fox." He was set at liberty on Saturday, the 1st of September, 1666, and he notes in his Journal that "the very next day after my release (Sunday, September 3), the fire broke out in London and the report of it came quickly down into the country." The date is confirmed by the gossiping Secretary of the Navy, Samuel Pepys, who, as he tells us in his "Diary," on that said Sunday morning rose at three o'clock, slipped on his nightgown, and looked out of the window of his house in Seething Lane, at the east end of the city, but, thinking the fire far enough off, "went to bed again and to sleep."

After his release from a severe imprisonment of two years and nine months, Fox was greatly weakened in body, and it seemed at the time unlikely he could long survive the hardships he had had to endure. On his release, he thus moralises upon his oppressors:—"And, indeed, I could not but take notice how the hand of the Lord turned against those of my persecutors who had been the cause of my imprisonment, or had been abusive or cruel to me in it. For the officer that fetched me to Howlker Hall wasted his estate, and very soon after fled into Ireland. And most of the justices that were upon the bench at the sessions when I was sent to prison died in a while after," and, he adds, "when I came into that country again, most of those that dwelt in Lancashire were dead, and others ruined in their estates. So that, though I did not seek revenge upon them for their acting against me contrary to law, yet the Lord had executed his judgments upon many of them."

It was not until 1667 that George Fox again visited Lancashire. In that year he was at William Barnes's, near Warrington, whence he sent letters into Westmorland and other places by Leonard Fell and Robert Widders; monthly meetings of the Friends were held, and to one of them he says:—"Margaret Fell, being a prisoner, got liberty to come, and went with me to Jane Milner's in Cheshire, where we parted." In the summer of the following year (1668) Mrs. Fell was set at liberty, and, on regaining her freedom, went into Cornwall with her daughter Mary, and her son-in-law, Thomas Lower. Shortly afterwards Fox proceeded to Ireland, and on his return he met with Margaret Fell at Bristol, she being, at the time, on a visit to another married daughter, Isabel Yeomans. "I had seen from the Lord a considerable time before," says Fox, "that I should take Margaret Fell to be my wife, and when I first mentioned it to her, she felt the answer of Life from God thereunto. But, though the Lord had opened this thing to me, yet I had not received a command from the Lord for the accomplishment of it then. Wherefore I let the thing rest, and went on in the work and service of the Lord as before, according as he led me; travelling up and down in this nation and through Ireland." His conduct in respect to his marriage was honourable and disinterested. Before finally deciding, he consulted the seven daughters of his intended wife and her sons-in-law, and obtained their sanction to the proposal, and, further, took care that the provision for the children of Judge Fell was settled and secured before the marriage. The judge's son was the only member of the family who disapproved of the union, but, as he is described as irreligious and of irregular habits, his opinion was disregarded. In his Journal Fox thus records the attendant circumstances:—

But now, being at Bristol, and finding Margaret Fell there, it opened in me from the Lord, that the thing should be accomplished. After we had discoursed the matter together, I told her, "if she also was satisfied with the accomplishing of it now, she should first send for her children," which she did. When the rest of her daughters, were come, I asked both them and her sons-in-law, "if they had anything against it, or for it," and they all severally expressed their satisfaction therein. Then I asked Margaret (Mrs. Fell) "if she had fulfilled and performed her husband's will to her children." She replied, "the children knew that." Whereupon I asked them, "whether, if their mother married, they should not lose by it?" And I asked Margaret, "whether she had done anything in lieu of it, which might answer it to the children?" The children said she had answered it to them, and desired me to speak no more of it. I told them, he adds, "I was plain, and would have all things done plainly; for I sought not any outward advantage to myself." So, after I had thus acquainted the children with it, our intention of marriage was laid before the Friends, both privately and publicly, to their full satisfaction; many of them gave testimony thereunto that it was of God. Afterwards, a meeting being appointed for the accomplishing thereof, in the meeting-house, at Broadmead, in Bristol, we took each other, the Lord joining us together in the honourable marriage, in the everlasting covenant and immortal seed of life.

The marriage of George Fox with Margaret Fell, which took place on the 18th of October, 1669, eleven years after the death of Thomas Fell, occasioned very little interruption to Fox's ministerial activity. After a brief "honeymoon" of ten days they took leave of each other, he going on a religious mission through the country, while his wife returned to her own home at Swarthmoor.

A few months after Margaret Fox's return her old adversary, Colonel Kirkby, caused her to be again arrested and recommitted at the age of 56 to Lancaster Castle. "The Sheriff of Lancaster," she writes, "sent his bailiff and pulled me out of my own house, and had me prisoner to Lancaster Castle (upon the old _præmunire_[6]), where I continued a whole year, and most of that time I was sick and weakly." At length, in April, 1671, through the intercession of influential Friends, a discharge under the Great Seal was obtained and she was set at liberty, the sentence of præmunire passed seven years before being annulled. "Then," she says, "I was to go up to London again, for my husband was intending for America."

The founder of Quakerism had determined upon a voyage across the Atlantic for the purpose of organising the numerous Friends who had been gathered in the far West by the earlier Quaker preachers. In these days such a voyage is accounted as little more than a mere pleasure trip to those who like, or do not absolutely dislike the sea, but in the days of the Stuart Kings it was a serious undertaking; nothing, however, could daunt the spirit of Fox or obstruct his progress when once an enterprise was determined upon. On the 12th of June, 1671, the little yacht, the "Industry," with its living freight of fifty passengers, including Fox and the twelve preachers, who had agreed to accompany him on his mission, sailed down the Thames, Margaret Fox and several Friends going with them as far as Gravesend. On the voyage they were chased by Barbary pirates, and after their landing they underwent many perils and hardships, for travelling in the then primitive condition of the American colonies was arduous work, involving constant camping out at night, fording deep rivers, wading through swamps and quagmires, and penetrating vast forests and wildernesses. Fox was generally welcomed, and received more kindness and courtesy from all classes than in his own country. The journey occupied two years, and in one of his letters he thus summarises it: "We have had great travail by land and sea, and rivers and bays and creeks, in New England, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Carolina; where we have had great service among Friends and governours and others, and with the Indians and their King and Emperor." On the 21st March, 1673, he set sail for England, and after a tempestuous voyage reached Bristol harbour on the 28th of the following month. His wife went up from Swarthmoor to meet him, accompanied by her son-in-law, Thomas Lower, and two of her daughters. It was the time of Bristol fair; great meetings were held, and the occasion was a memorable one, for it was amid the rant and turmoil of the fair that George Fox first made the acquaintance of William Penn. The great reformer had just landed from America, and there can be little doubt that this meeting led Penn to investigate human nature in the New World. A close intimacy sprang up between the two; they travelled much together, and in Fox's journal the name of the fearless and honest lawgiver—the future founder of Pennsylvania—is frequently mentioned. They visited at each other's houses. Fox was a guest at Worminghurst while Penn and his family resided there; and there is a well-founded tradition that he visited Fox at his abode at Swarthmoor, in Lancashire.

In January, 1674, Fox again found himself placed in durance on account of his preaching at Worcester; Thomas Lower, Margaret Fox's son-in-law, being imprisoned with him. He suffered from a lingering sickness, his life at one time being despaired of. After remaining in attendance upon him for seventeen weeks, his faithful wife went up to London, wrote a letter to the King beseeching him to release her husband, and took it herself to Whitehall, where she had an interview with Charles. Her pleading was unsuccessful; but eventually, after being in confinement for a year or more, a writ of Habeas Corpus was again obtained. He was paroled until the time of his trial, when the indictment against him was quashed, and he was set at liberty, being allowed to pass the remaining fifteen years of his life in peace, unmolested by gaolers, writs, or assizes. While he lay in the gaol at Worcester his aged mother died, her end being hastened, it is said, by bitter sorrow at her son's inability to come and take leave of her.

On regaining his liberty Fox returned northwards, accompanied by his wife. At Lancaster there was great gathering of the Friends; and having stayed there two nights and a day, they went over sands to Swarthmoor, where they arrived on the 25th of June, 1675. Here they were visited by many friends from different parts of the country, and among others their old antagonist, Colonel Kirkby, called to bid them welcome into the country, and, as the account says, "carried himself in appearance very lovingly;" though he immediately afterwards instructed the constables of Ulverston to inform Fox that "they must have no more meetings at Swarthmoor; for if they had, they were commanded to break them up." The imprisonment at Worcester had told seriously upon his health, and it was a year and eight months before he was again able to leave Swarthmoor. His time, however, was fully occupied in writing pamphlets, epistles, and controversial papers. Early in 1677 Fox left his northern home, his spirit being "drawn again towards the south;" and he did not return until the summer of the following year. In the interval, in company with William Penn and Robert Barclay, he spent several months preaching in Holland and Germany, after which he returned to London, where he stayed some time, and then proceeded to Swarthmoor, remaining there uninterrupted for a period of two years.

During his absence from Swarthmoor he vigilantly watched over his wife's interests, and took measures to protect her from the persecutions of some of the neighbouring clergy and magistrates. Thus, in a letter written from London on the 8th August, 1681, he says:—"Dearly Beloved,—There is a rumour here that one of the Justice Kirkbys (but which I cannot tell) took one of our fat oxen and killed him for his own table, in his own house, which ox was destrained and taken away from thee on account of your meeting at Swarthmoor. Now of the truth of this I desire to know, and, with a witness or two, to prove it; for justices of peace do not deny appeals here." And he concludes with the words: "Therefore, sweetheart, I do entreat thee to let me soon know the truth of all these things, and what thou writes let it be proved by witnesses."

It was in the same year that Fox and his wife were sued in the Cartmel Wapentake Court for the small tithes of the Swarthmoor Hall estate; he demurred to the jurisdiction of the court, when the plaintiffs carried the suit into the Exchequer Court at Westminster, where, he says, "they ran us up a writ of rebellion for not answering the bill upon oath, and got an order from the sergeant to take me and my wife into custody." In his answer to the plaintiffs' bill he stated that his wife had lived forty-three years at Swarthmoor Hall, and that during all that time no tithes had been either paid or demanded. Other proofs were given, but the answer could not be received without an oath, which the uncompromising Quaker would not take, and so, he says, "the court granted a sequestration against me and my wife together. Thereupon, by advice of counsel, we moved for a limitation, which was granted, and that much defeated our adversary's design in suing out the sequestration, for this limited the plaintiff from taking no more than was proved." On the same occasion William Mead, who had married one of Judge Fell's daughters, bore testimony to Fox's disinterested conduct, and informed the court that "he had before marriage engaged himself not to meddle with his wife's estate;" a statement the judges could scarcely credit until the documents in proof of it were produced.

Fox derived from his own property an income amply sufficient for his personal requirements without trenching upon that of his wife. Though he had never actively embarked in business he held shares in two small vessels trading from the port of Scarborough, and he had also an interest in other undertakings, besides moneys deposited in the hands of various friends. In addition, he had in Pennsylvania a thousand acres of land which were given to him by William Penn, though there is no evidence that he ever received any income from that source. The only lands he possessed were about three acres he had purchased at Swarthmoor for the maintenance of the meeting house, which, in 1688, the year of English freedom, he had there erected for his disciples, and which, shortly before his death, he conveyed by a deed of assignment to the Friends for ever. "It is," he says, "all the land and house I have in England; and it is given up to the Lord, for it is for his service, and for his children."

The declining years of his life were passed in comparative tranquillity, and its evening was soothed with the sunshine of many precious friendships. His time was spent chiefly either at Swarthmoor Hall or in London, where he had many followers, and where several meeting-houses had been established, the most notable being the one in Aldgate Street, named from its proximity to the celebrated old hostlery, the Bull and Mouth, now, as Mr. Cunningham justly says, "foolishly called the Queen's Hotel;"[7] and occasionally he made quiet journeys through some of the counties. In April, 1690, he was present for the last time at the annual gathering of the Friends from all parts of the kingdom, held in London; through the following winter he continued to attend the meetings of the society; and on Sunday, January the 11th, 1690-1, he attended a large meeting at Gracechurch Street, when he preached for the last time "fully and effectually." On leaving he went to Henry Goldney's in White Hart Court, close by, when he remarked that he "felt the cold strike to his heart as he came out of the meeting." He survived but two days, dying on Tuesday, January 13th, in the 67th year of his age, his last words being, "The power of God is over all." Three days after his remains, followed by a procession of 3,000 friends, were conveyed to their last resting place in that campo santo of Nonconformists—Bunhill Fields.

Fox lived long enough to see a considerable relaxation in the severity of the penal laws against Nonconformists, and the dawn of more peaceful times. After the accession of James II., the condition of the Quakers was much improved, the King permitting them to substitute an affirmation for the oath, when one of the chief causes of persecution was removed. William Penn, too, was high in favour at Court at this time; he had opened an asylum for the Friends in his new State of Pennsylvania, and, enjoying the personal favour of the King and the chief officers of the State, he won the means of securing further toleration for his co-religionists. Then followed the peaceful revolution which placed William of Orange upon the throne of England, when the rights of conscience were still more fully recognised, and the Act of Toleration put an end to the miseries and persecutions the Friends had so long been subjected to. If the Church was too severe in the punishments she awarded to her truant children, and oftentimes provoked them by her harshness to forsake the sanctuary and wander forth until new tabernacles sprang up in the wilderness of the world, it cannot be said that Quakers fared better under the sway of the Presbyterians or the rule of the Protectorate, for Puritanism itself was then a grinding social tyranny, too strict in its discipline, too little regardful of human weaknesses, and too fully persuaded that there could be no truth or godliness outside its own conceptions. Unfortunately for themselves, the Quakers were accounted a distinct community, with whom neither Episcopalians nor Protestant Dissenters had any legal or religious connection. The religious mind of the nation was entrenched within what it persuaded itself were the limits of Christianity, and the new sect which had sprung up was declared to be beyond the pale. The bitterness of spirit with which the disciples of Fox were regarded may be gathered from the resolution passed by the delegates and ministers of the Congregational churches in London who assembled on the occasion of the abdication of Richard Cromwell. They then declared, among other things, that while "we greatly prize our Christian liberties, yet we profess our utter dislike and abhorrence of a universal toleration, as being contrary to the mind of God in his word.... It is our desire that countenance be not given, or trust reposed in, the hands of the Quakers, they being persons of such principles as are destructive to the Gospel, and inconsistent with the peace of civil societies." It was a persecuting age, and not on one side alone of the great civil strife of the 17th century does the stigma of bigotry and intolerance remain; happily, out of the weakness, the foulness, and the darkness of those times, the nation, the Church, and the people have emerged with a strong hold on better things, the ascetic piety of the Puritan and the breadth of view of the Churchman—the religion of Herbert and of Laud, of Sibbes and of Milton—have mingled together and become elements of the national life and fruitful for the common good.

The followers of Fox were subjected to unparalleled hardships, but to their honour be it said their general acts were in strict accord with their religious professions, for during those long years of suffering for conscience sake there is not a single instance recorded of vindictive retaliation on their part, or of recourse being had to any weapon sharper than a text of Scripture. Fox, it is true, shared the extravagances of his age, and, like all teachers of his class and time, he was for a period more of an alarmist than a comforter; prone, like pious enthusiasts of the present day, to plough up the hearts of the people and discover sins which before they dreamt not of. In one respect he and his followers were certainly most reprehensible, in disturbing the worship of those differing in religion with themselves, for it must be admitted by those who respect their principles and admire their honesty and fortitude that they provoked much of the persecution they so patiently endured. The best principles of Quakerism—peace, and love, and brotherhood—remain, but the distinctive formula is on the decline, and those characteristics which made them obnoxious to other religious professors have disappeared altogether. As Dr. Halley justly observes, "A modern 'Friend,' mild, pleasant, neatly dressed, carefully educated, perfected in proprieties, is as unlike as possible, except in a few 'principles,' to the obtrusive, intolerant, rude, coarse, disputatious Quaker of the early days of their sect."[8]

Margaret Fox survived her husband 11 years, her death occurring at Swarthmoor on the 23rd February, 1702, in the 88th year of her age. At the time of her marriage with the Founder of the Society of Friends she had one son and seven daughters. Swarthmoor Hall, at her death, passed to her youngest daughter, Rachel, who had become the wife of Daniel, son of John Abraham, of Manchester; to them was born, in 1687, a son, John Abraham, who succeeded to the property, and who appears to have made some alterations and additions to the old mansion, as evidenced by a stone in the wall of one of the outbuildings, inscribed T F, 1651, and J A, 1715; the initials answering to Thomas Fell and John Abraham. Owing, as is supposed, to losses from some unsuccessful mining speculations in which John Abraham had embarked, the property became much encumbered, and in 1759, was finally brought to the hammer and disposed of in lots, when the family removed to Skerton, near Lancaster.

Of the descendants of Margaret Fox by her first husband, Thomas Fell, it was recorded a few years ago that there were then living ninety, of whom forty-three were members of the society which their ancestress had so largely helped to found.

Concerning John, the father of Daniel Abraham, who married the daughter of Margaret Fell, the following particulars are given in a publication called the British Friend, published at Glasgow, 1845:—

In Market Street (Manchester) is a pile of building called Abraham's Court. This was the property of John Abraham. He was a man of good parentage, and of standing and estate, of a family originally descended, it is said, from the Abrahams of Abram near Wigan; but his immediate ancestors resided at or near Warrington, where he was brought up to the trade of a grocer.[9] After his marriage he carried on his business in Manchester with great prudence and honesty, and to a large extent. He was one of the first who joined Friends, and suffered in the cause of truth. In 1675 he travelled southward. In Kent he was pulled down by the informers whilst preaching in a Friend's house, and taken to an inn with other Friends, but soon after dismissed: but the magistrate seized his horse, and two others, belonging to a poor man, which they ordered to be sold; the owner of the house was fined £20 for allowing the meeting to be held, and £7 for the pretended poverty of John Abraham, though he told them where he dwelt, and that he had an estate of his own at Manchester. For these fines, the owner of the house suffered distraint of goods from his house and warehouse to the amount of £77, equivalent to upwards of £150 in those days. No account of John Abraham has ever appeared. He was interred in the Deansgate burial ground; a stone marks his corporeal resting-place, and the Society's register of deaths records that "he was a minister, and travelled in Ireland and Scotland."

John Abraham had, in addition to his son, Daniel, a daughter, Mary, who became the wife of Edward Chetham, of Cheetham, Nuthurst, and, ultimately, of Turton Tower, the representative of Manchester's great benefactor, Humphrey Chetham, the founder of the hospital and library which bears his name, and from the marriage descends the present Right Hon. Sir Henry Bartle-Frere, Bart., G.C.B., G.C.S.I.

The third in descent from John Abraham, who removed to Skerton, was likewise named John; he married in 1844 Maria Hayes, daughter of John Tyerman, of Liverpool, and his wife, Mary Mitford. He resided at Grassendale, a pleasant suburb of Liverpool, and died February 20th, 1881, leaving as his heir Thomas Fell Abraham, and, with other issue, Emma Clarke Abraham, a lady to whom the author is indebted for many interesting particulars concerning the Fell and Abraham families.

Such are some of the memories of Swarthmoor. By the time we had completed the inspection of the old mansion and the primitive-looking little meeting-house, impressive in its severe and unostentatious simplicity, the sun was rapidly sinking in the west, and the shadows of objects were growing longer and longer, as if drawing themselves closer to the earth; the dark range of hills looked solemnly down upon us, and night's sable curtains were gradually closing over the scene. Turning to depart, we retraced our steps and descended the rugged track which soon brought us to the bottom of the dingle again. Then mounting the opposite eminence we reached the highway, and a few minutes later were comfortably settled in a cosy room in the "Sun," at Ulverston.