Gambar halaman
PDF
ePub

"

can palace, to the camp of the Grand Seignior, and to the islands of the sea. For a meeting-place" a large hall was taken at the Bull and Mouth Inn in London.1

Its reception

in England.

With the increase of the Quakers in number, and the extension of their plans for proselyting, the sect and its opponents became more excited. "By the priests and teachers of several sects abundance of books were now spread against the Quakers, as seducers and false prophets," while ready Quaker pens "did not suffer those writings to go unanswered, but clearly showed the malice and absurdities of those writers." At the same time, neither courts of justice nor mobs were idle. Bristol, Norwich, and Oxford were among the places specially complained of. At Bristol, two preachers "were assaulted by the rabble," who "violently abused them with beating, kicking, and a continual cry, 'Knock them down,' 'Kill them,' or 'Hang them presently." They replied with expostulations uttered "in zeal;" and "this instigated the rabble to that degree, that now they thought they had full liberty to use all kind of insolence against the said people, beating, smiting, pushing, and often treading upon them, till blood was shed; for they were become a prey to every malapert fellow, as a people that were without the protection of the law." The magistrates took the business

1 Sewel, History, &c. 82.

2

2 Ibid., 135, 136. Comp. 83.- No place was more savage against the Quakers than Bristol; and—whether this is to be considered cause or effect

it was one of the places which they chose for their most disagreeable demonstrations. James Naylor, a person of such consideration that, in letters of one of his friends, he was addressed as "The Everlasting Son of Righteousness, Prince of Peace, The Only Begotten Son of God, The Fairest of Ten Thousand," &c., rode into Bristol, with

a man walking bareheaded before him, and a woman leading his horse, while three others spread their scarfs and handkerchiefs before him, and the company sang, "Holy, Holy is the Lord God of Hosts; Hosannah in the Highest; Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God of Israel." It should be mentioned, however, that the private opinion of the Quaker historian was, that "J. Naylor was clouded in his understanding in all this transaction," though "it pleased God, in his infinite mercy, to raise him up again." Fox, who, in his way, was

in hand, and committed them to prison as Romish emissaries; for, strange to say, this opinion of them had obtained no little currency and credit.1

1655. Jan. 25.

Some of the "abundance of books" in this controversy must have soon reached New England, and with them some rumors of the acts and purposes of the new sect, rumors not weakened in their unpleasant import by the distance they had travelled.2 In the same year in which the written arraignments and apologies of Quakerism began to multiply, treatises "under the names of John Reeves and Ludovick Muggleton, who pretended themselves to be the two last witnesses

a Diotrephes, and "loved to have the pre-eminence," disapproved Naylor's course. (Ibid., 134.)

Evelyn had the curiosity to visit some Quakers in prison in London. He found them "a melancholy, proud sort of people, and exceedingly ignorant. One of them was said to have fasted twenty days; but another, endeavoring to do the like, perished on the tenth." (Memoirs, &c., I. 301.)

[ocr errors]

1 "Forasmuch"- -so runs the preamble of the warrant for their apprehension "as information hath been given us upon oath, that certain persons of the Franciscan order in Rome have of late come over into England, and, under the notion of Quakers, drawn together several multitudes of people in London; and whereas certain strangers, going under the names of John Camm..... and Edward Burrough, and others unknown, have lately resorted to this city, and in like manner, under the notion of Quakers, drawn multitudes of people after them, and occasioned very great disturbances amongst us; and forasmuch as, by the said information, it appeareth to us to be very probable, and much to be suspected, that the said persons, so lately come hither, are some of those that

came from Rome, as aforesaid," &c. (Besse, Collection of the Sufferings of the People called Quakers, &c., I. 40. Comp. Baxter, Quaker's Catechism, Præf.)

See Richard Baxter, Quaker's Catechism, Præf., 1. Thomas Underhill, "Hell Broke Loose," 6, 33, 36. John Wigan, "Antichrist's Strongest Hold Overturned,” 57, &c. - Baxter's book was published in 1656; Underhill's not till 1660, and Wigan's in 1665. But much of the substance of the two last-named books must have been long in circulation. When I refer to such stories as Underhill has collected, I am not to be understood as adopting them for true. I have not the means of ascertaining their truth, nor would their truth or falsity be to my purpose. I refer to them for what is to my purpose; - namely, to show what was reported and believed of the Quakers in respectable quarters in the mother country, and what, on that report, would be received in New England as substantial truth. The subsequent conduct of the Quakers in New England, however, was of a character to make those statements probable to their full extent.

1654.

Expectation

of

and prophets of Jesus Christ," appeared in Massachusetts, and the Court passed an order, which, as far as appears, was executed without difficulty, that Aug. 22. the volumes should be brought in and burned.1 No long time passed, before it must have come to their knowledge that emissaries more potent than books might be expected to be soon upon the way to them. The energetic travellers who were not to be deterred by the strange customs and languages of Germany and the Levant, could not be supposed to overlook New England, or to regard it otherwise than as "a field white to harvest." 66 If Quaker

the arriers in Mas

val of Quak

sachusetts.

preachers were Franciscan friars in disguise, as some people in England thought, they must be allowed no sphere for machinations in New England. If-as appeared to be quite generally understood where they were known they were publishers of irreligious fancies, declaimers against everything established, “evilspeakers against dignities" of every sort, provokers of tumult and violence wherever they came, then whoever had a right to refuse their companionship would do well to make his door fast against them.

So reasoned Endicott and his counsellors when they heard of the new danger that was to be confronted. Their imaginations represented the fabric of their institutions overthrown, and all their long and arduous work undone. The memory of the Antinomian troubles had not perished, and they intensely dreaded the renewal of such a strife. The unsettled condition of things in the parent country warned them to be sternly watchful. If the iron hand of Cromwell could scarcely restrain hotheaded men from intolerable irregularities, how was such restraint to be imposed where the bands of authority were so loosely knit as among themselves? They overrated the danger; for they did not know—what later 1 Mass. Rec., IV. (i.) 204.

But, esti

experience has shown-that, at any one time, there is but little fuel in the world for such excitement, because the class of minds susceptible of it is small. mating it as they erroneously did, in an evil hour they resolved to keep this dangerous people out of Massachusetts. All the more stiffly did this vigorous people resolve that into Massachusetts they would come, and there they would abide till it should suit them to depart. It is an unequal contest that is waged with adversaries, who whether by reason of insanity, or of passion, or of conscientiousness - are unembarrassed by the fear of death. Diogenes overcame the pride of Alexander with greater pride; the English Quakers broke down the obstinacy of the Puritan New-Englanders by more stubborn obstinacy. This time the Colonial authorities entered on their warfare without an intelligent counting of the cost. They did not know their opponents. Proceeding on the conviction that their territory was strictly their own homestead, and, as such, was invested with all the rights of security and privacy that a private proprietor enjoys, they had repeatedly asserted their right to its exclusive occupation by warning away or dismissing persons whose society they did not relish.1 In numerous instances they had banished intruders, and their decree of banishment had always been final. That they should pass such a decree, and that it should be disobeyed, would be the opening of a strange chapter in their experience.

1 The reader who would fully understand the claims and convictions of the rulers in Massachusetts in respect to their right to possess their territory exclusively, and to warn or drive away intruders, must take the trouble to look at Winthrop's argument in Hutchinson's Collection, 68, 69.- As a corporation, they had acquired from the King of England whatever rights England had to the country. As a corpora

tion, they had acquired, by agreement and purchase, whatever rights the Indians had. As owners of the country by both these titles, they had an absolute right to say who should dwell in it. Such was their doctrine. With all explicitness, it had long before this time been asserted in England by Winslow in " New England's Salamander," &c. (See Mass. Hist. Coll., XXII. 120; comp. Edward Johnson, 206.)

Endicott,

and Norton.

In respect to this passage of her history, Massachusetts was unfortunate in the temper of the three men who had now the most important agency in her administration. The Governor and Deputy-Governor at this time were Endicott and Bellingham. With the vehement character of both, the reader has already some acquaintance. To them and to John Norton the Quakers Bellingham, correctly, as it seems — ascribed the chief influence in determining the course of measures which was now begun. After Cotton's death, Norton must be regarded as the leading minister of the Colony. He came to New England five years after Winthrop, and, 1635. having served the Plymouth church for a few months, became Nathaniel Ward's successor at Ipswich, where he remained twenty years. When Cotton died, Norton was thought worthy above others to succeed him in the important position of Teacher of the church of Boston; and he was installed in that office in 1656. the month in which Quakers first came to New July 23. England. His commanding abilities and his melancholy temperament gave a character to the part which he acted in the scenes which followed.

May 14.

The first notice of the Quakers in Massachusetts occurs in an order passed by the General Court appointing "a public day of humiliation," of which the purpose first named was "to seek the face of God in behalf of our native country, in reference to the abounding of errors, especially those of the Ranters and Quakers."2 Scarcely was the fast-day over, when a vessel Quakers from Barbadoes brought into Boston harbor two at Boston. Quaker women, Mary Fisher and Ann Austin.

1 Norton was born at Starford, in Hertfordshire, and educated at Peter House, Cambridge. He graduated Bachelor of Arts in 1623, and, taking orders, became curate of the church in his native place, and afterwards chap

July.

lain to Sir William Masham. He came to Plymouth in company with Edward Winslow. See Vol. I. 544; also see above, pp. 92, 155, 176, &c.

2 Mass. Rec., IV. (i.) 276.

« SebelumnyaLanjutkan »