Читать книгу A Book of Quaker Saints - L. V. Hodgkin - Страница 9

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'He is stiff as a tree and pure as a bell, and we could never bow him.' So spoke the rough soldiers of Scarborough Castle of their prisoner, George Fox, after he had been set at liberty. A splendid thing it was for soldiers to say of a prisoner whom they had held absolutely in their power. But a tree does not grow stiff all at once. It takes many years for a tiny seedling to grow into a sturdy oak. A bell has to undergo many processes before it gains its perfect form and pure ringing note. And a whole lifetime of joys and sorrows had been needed to develop the 'stiffness' (or steadfastness, as we should call it now) and purity of character that astonished the soldiers in their prisoner. There will not be much story in this history of George Fox's early days, but it is the foundation-stone on which most of the later stories will be built.

It was in July 1624, the last year in which James the First, King of England, ruled in his palace at Whitehall, that far away in a quiet Leicestershire village their first baby was born to a weaver and his wife. They lived in a small cottage with a thatched roof and wooden shutters, in a village then known as 'Drayton-in-the-Clay,' because of the desolate waters of the marshlands that lay in winter time close round the walls of the little hamlet. Even though the fens and marshes have now long ago been drained and turned into fertile country, the village is still called 'Fenny Drayton.' The weaver's name was Christopher Fox. His wife's maiden name had been Mary Lago; and the name they gave to their first little son was George.

Mary Lago came 'of the stock of the martyrs': that is to say, either her parents or her grand-parents had been put to death for their faith. They had been burnt at the stake, probably, in one of the persecutions in the reign of Queen Mary. From her 'martyr stock' Mary Lago must have learned, when she was quite a little girl, to worship God in purity of faith. Later on, after she had become the mother of little George, it was no wonder that her baby son sitting on her knee, looking up into her face, or listening to her stories, learned from the very beginning to try to be 'Pure as a Bell.'

Mary Lago's husband, Christopher Fox, did not come 'of the stock of the martyrs,' but evidently he had inherited from his ancestors plenty of tough courage and sturdy sense. Almost the only story remembered about him is that one day he stuck his cane into the ground after listening to a long dispute and exclaimed: 'Now I see that if a man will but stick to the truth it will bear him out.'

When little George grew old enough to scramble down from his mother's knee and to walk with unsteady steps across the stone-flagged floor of the cottage, there was his weaver father sitting at his loom, making a pleasant rhythmic sound that filled the small house with music. As the boy watched the skilful hands sending the flying shuttle in and out among the threads, he learned from his father, not only the right way to weave good reliable stuff, but also how to weave the many coloured threads of everyday life into a strong character. The village people called his father 'Righteous Christer,' which shows that he too must have been 'stiff as a tree' in following what he knew to be right; for a name like that is not very easily earned where village eyes are sharp and village tongues are shrewd.

THE BOYHOOD OF GEORGE FOXToList

Less than a mile from the weaver's cottage stood the Church and the Manor House side by side. The churchyard had a wall of solid red bricks, overshadowed by a border of solemn old yew-trees. The Manor House was encircled by a moat on which graceful white swans swam to and fro. For centuries the Purefoy family had been Squires of Drayton village. They had inhabited the Manor House while they were alive, and had been buried in the churchyard close by after they were dead. The present Squire was a certain COLONEL GEORGE PUREFOY. It may have been after him that 'Righteous Christer' called his eldest son George, or it may have been after that other George, 'Saint George for Merrie England,' whose image killing the Dragon was to be seen engraved on each rare golden 'noble' that found its way to the weaver's home. Christopher and Mary Fox were both of them possessed of more education than was usual among country people at that time, when reading and writing were still rare accomplishments. 'Righteous Christer' was an important man in the small village. Besides being a weaver, he was also a churchwarden, and was able to sign his own name in bold characters, as may still be seen to-day in the parish registers, where his fellow-churchwarden, being unable to read or write, was only able to sign his name with a cross. Unfortunately this same register, which ought to record the exact day of July 1624 on which little George was baptized here in the old church, no longer mentions him, since, more than a hundred years after his time, the wife of the Sexton of Fenny Drayton, running short of paper to cover her jam-pots, must needs lay hands on the valuable Church records and tear out a few priceless pages just here. So, although several other brothers and sisters followed George and came to live in the weaver's cottage during the next few years, we know none of their ages or birthdays, until we come to the record of the baptism of the youngest sister Sarah. Happily her page came last of all, after the Sexton's jam was finished, and thus Sarah's name escaped being made into the lid of a jam-pot. But we will hope that the weaver and his wife remembered and kept all their children's birthdays on the right days, even though they are forgotten now. However that may have been, George's parents 'endeavoured to train him up, as they did their other children, in the common way of worship—his mother especially being eminent for piety: but even from a child he was seen to be of another frame of mind from his brethren, for he was more religious, retired, still and solid, and was also observing beyond his age. His mother, seeing this extraordinary temper and godliness, which so early did shine through him, so that he would not meddle with childish games, carried herself indulgent towards him. … Meanwhile he learned to read pretty well, and to write as much as would serve to signify his meaning to others.'

When he saw older people behaving in a rowdy, frivolous way, it distressed him, and the little boy used to say to himself: 'If ever I come to be a man, surely I will not be so wanton.'

'When I came to eleven years of age,' he says himself in his Journal, 'I knew pureness and righteousness; for while I was a child I was taught how to walk so as to be kept pure, and to be faithful in two ways, both inwardly to God, and outwardly to man, and to keep to Yea and Nay in all things.'

At that time there was a law obliging everybody to attend Church on Sundays, and as the services lasted for several hours at a time, the weaver's children doubtless had time to look about them, and learned to know the stones of the old church well. When the Squire and his family were at home they sat in the Purefoy Chapel in the North Aisle. From this Chapel a door in the wall opened on to a path that led straight over the drawbridge across the moat to the Manor House. It must have been interesting for all the village children to watch for the opening and shutting of that door. But up in the chancel there was, and still is, something even more interesting: the big tomb that a certain Mistress Jocosa or Joyce Purefoy had put up to the memory of her husband, who had died in the days of good Queen Bess.

'PURE FOY, MA JOYE,' the black letters of the family motto, can still be read on a marble scroll. If George in his boyhood ever asked his mother what the French words meant, Mary Fox, who was, we are told, 'accomplished above her degree in the place where she lived,' may have been able to tell him that they mean, in English, 'Pure faith is my Joy'; or that, keeping the rhyme, they might be translated as follows:—

'MY FAITH PURE, MY JOY SURE.'

Then remembering what had happened in her own family, surely she would add, 'And I, who come of martyr stock, know that that is true. Even if you have to suffer for it, my son, even if you have to die for it, keep your Faith pure, and your Joy will be sure in the end.'

Then Righteous Christer would take the little lad up on his shoulder and show him the broken spear above the tomb, the crest of the Purefoys, and tell him its story. Hundreds of years before, one of the Squires of this family had defended his liege lord on the battle-field at the risk of his own life, and even after his weapon, a spear, had been broken in his hand. His lord, out of gratitude for this, had given his faithful follower, not only the right to wear the broken spear in token of his valour ever after as a crest, but also by his name and by his motto to proclaim to all men the PURE FAITH (PUREFOY) that had given him this sure and lasting joy. Ever since, for hundreds of years, the Purefoy family had handed down, by their name, by their motto, and by the broken spear on their crest, this noble tradition of loyalty and allegiance—enshrined like a shining jewel in the centre of the muddy village of Drayton-in-the-Clay.

This was not the only battle story the boy must have known well. A few miles from Fenny Drayton is 'the rising ground of Market Bosworth,' better known as Bosworth Field. As he grew older George loved to wander over the fields that surrounded his birthplace. He 'must have often passed the site of Henry's camp, perhaps may have drunk sometimes at the well at which Richard is said to have quenched his thirst.' But although his home was near this old battlefield, the boy grew up in a peaceful England. Probably no one in Fenny Drayton imagined that in a very few years the smiling English meadows would once more be drenched in blood. George Fox in his country home was brought up to follow country pursuits, and was especially skilful in the management of sheep. He says in his Journal: 'As I grew up, my relations thought to have made me a priest, but others persuaded to the contrary. Whereupon I was put to a man who was a shoemaker by trade, and dealt in wool. He also used grazing and sold cattle; and a great deal went through my hands. While I was with him he was blest, but after I left him, he broke and came to nothing. I never wronged man or woman in all that time. … While I was in that service, I used in my dealings the word "Verily," and it was a common saying among those that knew me, "if George says Verily, there is no altering him." When boys and rude persons would laugh at me, I let them alone, but people generally had a love to me for my innocence and honesty.

'When I came towards 19 years of age, being upon business at a Fair, one of my cousins, whose name was Bradford, a professor, having another professor with him, asked me to drink part of a jug of beer with them. I, being thirsty, went with them, for I loved any that had a sense of good. When we had drunk a glass apiece, they began to drink healths and called for more drink, agreeing together that he that would not drink should pay for all. I was grieved that they should do so, and putting my hand into my pocket took out a groat and laid it on the table before them, saying, "If it be so, I will leave you." So I went away, and when I had done my business I returned home, but did not go to bed that night, nor could I sleep, but sometimes walked up and down and prayed and cried unto the Lord, who said to me: "Thou must forsake all, young and old, keep out of all and be a stranger to all."

'Then at the command of God, the 9th of the 7th month,[1] 1643, I left my relations, and broke off all familiarity or fellowship with young or old.'

The old-fashioned English of the 'Journal' makes this story rather puzzling at the first reading, because several words have changed in meaning since it was written. The name 'professors,' did not then mean learned men who teach or lecture in a University, but any men who 'professed' to be particularly religious and good. These 'professionally religious people' are generally known as 'the Puritans,' and it was meeting with these bad specimens among them who 'professed' a religion they did not attempt to practise, that so dismayed George Fox. Here at any rate 'Pure Faith' was not being kept either to God or men. He must find a more solid foundation on which to rest his own soul's loyalty and allegiance. Over the porch of the Church at Fenny Drayton is painted now, not the Purefoy motto, but the words: 'I will go forth in the strength of the Lord God.' It was from this place that George Fox set forth on the long search for a 'Pure Faith' that, when he found it, was to bring both to him and to many thousands of his countrymen a 'Sure Joy.'

Why Righteous Christer and his wife did not help George more at this time remains a puzzle. They may have been afraid lest he was making a terrible mistake in leaving the worship they knew and followed, or they may have guessed that God was really calling him to do some work for Him bigger than they could understand, and may have felt that they could help their boy best by leaving him free to follow the Voice that spoke to him in the depths of his own heart, even if he had to fight his own battles unaided. Or possibly their thoughts were too full of all the actual battles that were filling the air just then to think any other troubles important. For our Quaker Saints are not legendary people; they are a real part of English History.

All through the years of George's boyhood the struggle between King Charles the First and his Parliament had been getting more tense and embittered. The abolition of the Star Chamber (May 1640), the attempted arrest of the five Members (October 1642), the trial and death, first of Strafford (May 1641) and then of Laud (January 1645)—all these events had been convulsing the great heart of the English nation during the long years while young George had been quietly keeping his master's sheep and cattle in his secluded Leicestershire village.

A year before he left home the long-dreaded Civil War had at last broken out. But the Civil War that broke out in the soul of the young shepherd lad, the struggle between good and evil when he saw his Puritan cousin tempting other people to drink and carouse, was to him a more momentous event than all the outward battles that were raging. His Journal hardly mentions the rival armies of King and Parliament that were marching through the land. Yet in reading of his early struggles in his own spirit, we must always keep in the background of our minds the thought of the great national struggle that was raging at the same time. It was not in the orderly, peaceful, settled England of his earliest years that the boy grew to manhood, but in an England that was being torn asunder by the rival faiths and passions of her sons. Men's minds were filled with the perplexities of great national problems of Church and State, of tyranny and freedom. No wonder that at such a time everyone was too busy to spare much sympathy or many thoughts for the spiritual perplexities of one obscure country lad.

Right into the very middle, then, of this troubled, seething England, George Fox plunged when he left his home at Fenny Drayton. The battle of Marston Moor was fought the following year, July 1644, and Naseby the summer after that. But George was not heeding outward battles. Up and down the country he walked, seeking for help in his spiritual difficulties from all the different kinds of people he came across; and there were a great many different kinds. The England of that day was not only torn by Civil War, it was also split up into innumerable different sects, now that the attempt to force everyone to worship according to one prescribed fashion was at length being abandoned. In one small Yorkshire town it is recorded that there were no less than forty of these sects worshipping in different ways about this time, while new sects were continually arising.

Perhaps it was a generous wish to give the professors another chance and not to judge the whole party from the bad specimens he had met, that made George go back to the Puritans for help. At first they made much of the young enquirer; but, alas! they all had the same defect as those he had met already. Their spoken profession sounded very fine, but they did not carry it out in their lives.

'They sought to be acquainted with me, but I was afraid of them, for I was sensible they did not possess what they professed.' In other words, their faith did not ring true. The professors were certainly not 'Pure as a Bell.'

George Fox's test was always the same, both for his own religion and other people's: 'Is this faith real? Is it true? Can you actually live out what you profess to believe? And do you? Is your faith pure? Is your joy sure?'

Finding that, in the case of the professors, a sorrowful 'No' was the only answer that their lives gave to these questions, George says: 'A strong temptation to despair came over me. I then saw how Christ was tempted, and mighty troubles I was in. Sometimes I kept myself retired in my chamber, and often walked solitary in the Chace to wait upon the Lord.'

It must not be forgotten that part of the Puritan worship consisted in making enormously long prayers in spoken words, and preaching sermons that lasted several hours at a time. George Fox became more and more sure that this was not the worship God wanted from him, as he thought over these matters in solitude under the trees of Barnet Chace.

After a time he went back to his relations in Leicestershire. They saw the youth was unhappy, and very naturally thought it would be far better for him to settle down and have a happy home of his own than to go wandering about the country in distress about the state of his soul.

'Being returned into Leicestershire, my relations would have had me married; but I told them I was but a lad and must get wisdom.' Other people said: 'No, don't marry him yet. Put him into the auxiliary band among the soldiery. Once he gets fighting, that will soon knock the notions out of his head.'

Young George would not consent to this plan either. He had his own battle to fight, his own victory to win, unaided and alone. He did not yet know that it was useless for him to seek for outward help. Being still only a lad of nineteen he thought that surely there must be someone among his elders who could help him, if only he could find out the right person. Having failed with the professors, he determined next to consult the priests and see if they could advise him in his perplexities. 'Priests' is another word that has changed its meaning almost as much as 'professors' has done. By 'priests' George Fox does not mean Anglican or Roman Catholic clergy, but simply men of any denomination who were paid for preaching. At this particular time the English Rectories and Vicarages were mostly occupied by Presbyterians and Independents. It was they who preached and who were paid for preaching in the village churches, which is what he means by calling them 'priests' in his Journal.

In these stories there is no need to think of George Fox as arguing or fighting against real Christianity in any of the churches. He was fighting, rather, against sham religion, formality and hypocrisy wherever he found them. In that great fight all who truly love Truth and God are on the same side, even though they are called by different names. So remember that these old labels that he uses for his opponents have changed their meaning very considerably in the three hundred years that have passed since his birth. Remember too that the world had had at that time nearly three hundred years less in which to learn good manners than it has now. The manners and customs of the day were much rougher than those of modern times. However much we may disagree with people, there is no need for us to tell them so in the same sort of harsh language that was too often used by George Fox and his contemporaries.

To these Presbyterian priests, therefore, George went next to ask for counsel and help. The first he tried was the Reverend Nathaniel Stephens, the priest of his own village of Fenny Drayton. At first Priest Stephens and young George seemed to get on very well together. Another priest was often with Stephens, and the two learned men would often talk and argue with the boy, and be astonished at the wise answers he gave. 'It is a very good, full answer,' Stephens once said to George, 'and such an one as I have not heard.' He applauded the boy and spoke highly of him, and even used the answers he gave in his own sermons on Sundays. This was a compliment, but it cost him George's friendship and respect, because he felt it was a deceitful practice. The Journal says: 'What I said in discourse to him on week-days, he would preach of on first days, which gave me a dislike to him. This priest afterwards became my great persecutor.'

Priest Stephens' wife was also very much opposed to Fox, and it is said that on one occasion she 'very unseemly plucked and haled him up and down, and scoffed and laughed.' Fox always felt that this priest and his wife were his bitter foes; but other people described Priest Stephens as 'a good scholar and a useful preacher, in his younger days a very hard student, in his old age pleasant and cheerful.' So, as generally happens, there may have been a friendly side to this couple for those who took them the right way.

After this, Fox continues, 'I went to another ancient priest at Mancetter in Warwickshire, and reasoned with him about the ground of despair and temptations; but he was ignorant of my condition; he bade me take tobacco and sing psalms. Tobacco was a thing I did not love, and psalms I was not in a state to sing; I could not sing. Then he bid me come again and he would tell me many things; but when I came he was angry and pettish; for my former words had displeased him. He told my troubles, sorrows and griefs to his servants so that it got among the milk-lasses. It grieved me that I should have opened my mind to such a one. I saw they were all miserable comforters, and this brought my troubles more upon me. Then I heard of a priest living about Tamworth, which was accounted an experienced man, and I went seven miles to him; but I found him like an empty hollow cask. I heard also of one called Dr. Craddock of Coventry, and went to him. I asked him the ground of temptations and despair, and how troubles came to be wrought in man? He asked me, "Who was Christ's Father and Mother?" I told him Mary was His Mother, and that He was supposed to be the son of Joseph, but He was the Son of God. Now, as we were walking together in his garden, the alley being narrow, I chanced, in turning, to set my foot on the side of a bed, at which the man was in a rage, as if his house had been on fire. Thus all our discourse was lost, and I went away in sorrow, worse than I was when I came. I thought them miserable comforters, and saw they were all as nothing to me; for they could not reach my condition. After this I went to another, one Macham, a priest in high account. He would needs give me some physic, and I was to have been let blood; but they could not get one drop of blood from me, either in arms or head (though they endeavoured to do so), my body being, as it were, dried up with sorrows, grief and troubles, which were so great upon me that I could have wished I had never been born, or that I had been born blind, that I might never have seen wickedness or vanity; and deaf, that I might never have heard vain and wicked words, or the Lord's name blasphemed. When the time called Christmas came, while others were feasting and sporting themselves, I looked out poor widows from house to house, and gave them some money. When I was invited to marriages (as I sometimes was) I went to none at all, but the next day, or soon after, I would go to visit them; and if they were poor, I gave them some money; for I had wherewith both to keep myself from being chargeable to others, and to administer something to the necessities of those who were in need.'

Three years passed in this way, and then at last the first streaks of light began to dawn in the darkness. They came, not in any sudden or startling way, but little by little his soul was filled with the hope of dawn: