The Journal of the Friends' Historical Society vol. 66

The Journal of the Friends Historical Society Volume 66 2015 CONTENTS page 1-2 Editorial 3-20 'Enemy aliens': Quakers and Germans in Britain during World War 1 Betty Hagglund 21-42 Penington and Politics: three pamphlets considered Peter Smith 43-52 The Buildings of Settle Meeting House in 1678 Oliver Pickering 53-58 'Misorcus' and Richard Richardson Judith Roads 59-67 Recent Publications 68-69 Biographies FRIENDS HISTORICAL SOCIETY President 2015: Clerk: lVfembership Secretary Treasurer: Editor of the Journal: Newsletter Editor Betty Hagglund Howard F. Gregg Gil Skidmore Rod Harper Gil Skidmore Sylvia Stevens Annual membership subscription due 1st January (personal, Meetings and Quaker Institutions in Great Britain and Ireland) £12 US $24 and £20 or $40 for other institutional members. Subscriptions should be paid to Gil Skidmore, Membership Secretary, 46 Princes Drive, Skipton, BD23 1HL. Orders for single numbers and back issues should be sent to FHS c/o the Library, Friends House, 173 Euston Road, London NW1 2BJ. Volume 66 2015 THE JOURNAL OF THE FRIENDS HISTORICAL SOCIETY Communications should be addressed to the Editor of the Journal Gil Skidmore, 46 Princes Drive, Skipton, BD23 1HL email: [email protected] Reviews Editor: Chris Skidmore, 46 Princes Drive, Skipton, BD23 1HL. email: [email protected]. EDITORIAL Howard Gregg has been editor of this journal for the volumes covering the years 1997 to 2014, a period in real terms of nearly twenty years. During that time he has maintained a high standard of content and has undertaken his task with diligence and rigour. I would like to thank him for all that he has done and hope that I can continue his work in my own way. Although this volume has been delayed I hope to produce another before the end of 2017 and that by the end of 2018 we will be back on track. Betty Hagglund's Presidential Address gives a vivid picture of the treatment of 'enemy aliens' during World War I, of the setting up of detention centres such as Knockaloe on the Isle of Man and of how Quakers got involved in relief work with those detained and their families. Peter Smith looks at three pamphlets by the Peningtons, father and son, and examines their involvement in the English Civil War, mainly before Isaac junior became a Quaker. Oliver Pickering uses minutes and a hitherto unpublished document to give us a detailed account of the building of Settle meeting house, a useful addition both to local and to building history. Judith Roads takes a different view of two doctrinal dispute tracts from the 1670s, analysing the language used in them. The Reviews Editor, Chris Skidmore, has again brought together an interesting range of book reviews. 2 I am very happy to consider articles for future volumes of the Journal. If you have something already written, a talk you have given or perhaps a work in progress please do not hesitate to contact me. Also if you would like to suggest people working in any area of Quaker history who might like to write for the Journal please feel free to do so. Gil Skidmore, editor 3 "THOSE ENEMY ALIENS": QUAKERS AND GERMANS IN BRITAIN DURING WORLD WAR I At the beginning of World War I, there were approximately 56,000 Germans living in Britain, and smaller communities of Austrians and Hungarians. Most had arrived during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries for primarily economic reasons. By the outbreak of the war, there were German and Austrian communities in many British cities, particularly London, Manchester, Liverpool, Bradford and Leeds. 1 Many had married British wives and had children born in England. Some were naturalised British citizens. Many were long-stay residents, well integrated into their local neighbourhood and running wellestablished businesses. I am going to refer to these German and Austrian immigrant communities as 'alien enemies', because that was the terminology used by both the government and the press throughout the war. From the beginning of the war, this group of immigrants both those who had been here for years and those who had just arrived, 'found [themselves] under attack both officially and unofficially'.2 On 5 August 1914, the day after Britain entered the war, the British government passed the Aliens Restriction Act. The Act restricted 'the movement of alien enemies from, to, and in the United Kingdom'.3 No alien could enter or leave Britain except through an approved port. All Germans and Austrians who remained in Britain after the outbreak of war had to register themselves by mid-August at their nearest registration office, usually the local police station. This included British women who had married Germans or Austrians - by marrying, they lost their British nationality and this loss of citizenship continued even if they were widowed or divorced. If any alien failed to register by the deadline, they could be subject to a one hundred pound fine or six months in prison (the average weekly wage at the time was between sixteen and thirty-four shillings). Long queues formed outside police stations. The Manchester Guardian (10 August) reported that outside Tottenham Court Road there were long lines including 'many quiet looking old ladies, probably teachers, young German girl students, tourists caught without money, barbers, stockbrokers, shipping 4 THOSE ENEMY ALIENS clerks, waiters, bankers and some of the much less responsible occupations'. Those who went to register faced long waits. Yesterday morning [8 August] I went straight to the police station to register myself which I thought would take me 1 to 2 hours at the outside. Well, I joined the queue outside the police station at 9.10 am and I got inside at 20 minutes to 7 pm!!! It was a terrible experience to stand there for 10 hours in an awful crush while it was raining all the morning and with nothing to eat since breakfast. 4 Those registering had to give details as to nationality, occupation, appearance, residence and service of any foreign government. They had to demonstrate 'a good character and knowledge of English'. Enemy aliens were banned from owning firearms, signalling equipment, homing pigeons, cameras and naval or military maps. On registration, enemy aliens were given strict rules as to where they could live and where they could not go. They were prohibited from living within twenty-five miles of the sea - all Germans were turned out of Portsmouth within three days of the Act, for example,S and subsequent additions covered movement, residence and social activities. Germans could not travel more than five miles and had to apply for permission to take employment or to take part in fire-watching duties - even for permission to ride a bicycle. German newspapers, clubs and restaurants were closed. On the day that war was declared, Sophia Sturge, a Birmingham Quaker in her sixties who had been active in the pre-war peace movement, was travelling home from London to Birmingham. She passed queues of hundreds of Germans waiting to register as 'enemy aliens'. During the journey she wrote a letter to Stephen Hobhouse, a fellow Quaker and young follower of Tolstoy who had recently returned from a year's relief work in the Balkans, suggesting that the .enemy aliens' would need comfort and help'. During the fateful days before the war I was in London, working with a hundred others on the streets to keep the neutrality of England if possible; and had time allowed many of us believe this would have been done. Before war was declared the house of the German Consul was besieged from early morning till late at night by men who I THOSE ENEMY ALIENS 5 were trying to get registered and go home. Hundreds waited there, and as I was staying close by, I saw them and talked with some of them. When war was declared and the chance of getting back became hopeless, I wondered what could be done to help the stranded ones left behind.6 Meeting for Sufferings met on 7 August to discuss the war and Friends' response. They issued a public statement, 'Message to Men and Women of Goodwill'; discussed various types of service that Friends might undertake and suggested that at least some meeting houses might open daily for prayer. Stephen Hobhouse brought forward the needs of the large German colony in England, and urged the appointment of a committee to give relief and hospitality to those in need. He argued that 'This will not be a popular service, but surely it is one that our Society ought to undertake'. Within days, Friends set up the 'Emergency Committee for the Assistance of Germans, Austrians and Hungarians in distress' (usually known as the Friends' Emergency Committee). In the early weeks, working from St. Stephens House on the Westminster embankment, the committee concentrated on finding sympathetic people willing to give employment to some of the thousands of Germans who had suddenly been thrown on the streets, accommodation for those who had lost their homes and financial help - sometimes for food or clothing, sometimes to help people return to Germany. Many German reservists had been called home, leaving their British wives and children destitute and without support, and they too were helped by the committee. By November 1914, over 2800 cases had been dealt with. In 1920, looking back at the work of the Friends' Emergency Committee, Anna Braithwaite Thomas wrote of those early days: Hundreds of discharged waiters flocked to us begging for work. Many of them had excellent references showing years of service in the best London hotels. Now in response to popular clamour they were destitute. Many had lost not only their jobs but their lodgings too, and were sleeping in the parks. Fortunately, August of 1914 was fine and warm, but soon the autumn rains of an exceptionally wet winter set in, and these poor people suffered. We arranged a soup kitchen for them and 6 THOSE ENEMY ALIENS strove to help them in other ways. Eventually they were all interned Whole families came to us also, father, mother and little children. Sometimes they were faint for want of food, for many would not ask for help whilst they had a crust remaining. We saw people in the pangs of hungerpeople who fainted away whilst being interviewedpeople who looked at us with sad despairing eyes and burst into tears at the first kindly word. Careful arrangements were made for investigating the truth of their stories and we required at least two reputable references before giving anything beyond an emergency grant. To meet the first needs we were able to obtain a considerable number of offers of hospitality, and many Friends and others entertained these distressed people for days, weeks or even months at a time. Two furnished houses were allowed to be used by the Committee as hostels, and a lady furnished a roomy garage as a temporary shelter for some of the cases when delayed in London waiting for their travelling permits. 7 Originally there were no plans for the internment of alien enemies. However, on 7 August 1914, the government issued orders for the arrest of 'those most likely to be dangerous/,s primarily German and Austrian men between the ages of seventeen and forty-two. By 13 August, nearly 2000 people had been interned. This figure reached 4800 by the end of the month. Germans and Austrians continued to be arrested and interned through September, and the number of people in internment camps increased to 6600 by 7 September and 11,000 by 16 September. By 23 September, there were 13,600 internees of whom 10,500 were civilians, while the rest had been captured on the battlefield. But at that point, arrests were suspended because the War Office had made use of all available accommodation, including race courses, abandoned factories, ships, tented camps and Alexandra Palace. Only those perceived as being an immediate danger continued to be arrested. However, during October 1914, popular anti-German hostility increased, fuelled by an anti-German popular press, and led to anti-German riots. German shops were attacked by large mobs, so too were German homes, with windows smashed, THOSE ENEMY ALIENS 7 furniture destroyed and family possessions including clothing looted. 9 Suggestions were made in the press that any German was probably a spy. One paper actually told its readers to check whether their waiter was German - if he was, they were advised not to eat the food. A Member of the Government, speaking in the House of Commons, declared that in his view these acts 'expressed the righteous indignation of the nation',10 thereby practically giving official sanction for the rioting. In what they called 'the interests of public safety and public order', the Home Office again started arresting and interning people. Again they quickly ran out of space, and the policy was again suspended. General internment did not begin again until May 1915, after the sinking of the Lusitania, when an order was given to intern all male enemy aliens of military age (17-55), and to repatriate all men above that age. The internments moved the Friends' Emergency Committee into a new phase of work. Requests for help began to flow in from the various camps, and the committee sent representatives to visit the men and discuss their many troubles with them. Anna Thomas, then serving on the Executive Committee, wrote in the FEe's Annual Report in 1916 that these discussions included ·every kind of business and domestic difficulty'. Would we find out why the wife was not writing, whether she was seriously ill or not; could we help in the discipline of an unruly boy, or with the education of a brilliant one; more common than all, could we not help with food or clothing or work to prevent starvation or illness which inevitably descended on those homes where the slender Government grant was the only income; could we find missing luggage, will or papers; could we pay off landladies, collect debts, redeem pawned goods, trace relatives, send children to Germany, patent inventions, pay wife's fare to camp, arrange a wedding or a funeral, with many other suggestionsY The Committee helped both German and British wives of German men. At the start of the war, the German and Austrian governments provided ten thousand pounds and five thousand pounds respectively to the American Embassy in London' for the benefit of their distressed nationals in this country'. Grants went to the wives and children of men serving in the German army or 8 THOSE ENEMY ALIENS navy and to the destitute wives of civilian Germans interned in the camps, at a level similar to those paid to the wives of serving British soldiers. Initially the German government funds covered all wives of German men, whether German or British born. However, from 19 November 1914 they stopped supporting British born wives. The Local Government Board took over and reduced the subsistence allowances by 50%. The funds that the Local Government Board provided went to the British-born wives of alien enemies, women who had already been left destitute by the loss of the family's breadwinner and who were often living amongst hostile neighbours who had witnessed the police coming to arrest the husband, When a woman made a claim, she had to produce proof of her English birth, her marriage, and her husband's internment and the process of claiming could take weeks or months. The process was in the hands of the local Poor Law Guardians and the order was worded 'they may give up to such and such an amount if deemed necessary', leaving the award of the grant to local discretion, and they were called up before the Guardians for re-assessment every few weeks. Anna Thomas wrote that: Many self-respecting, well-to-do people hesitated long and pawned or sold everything before they could bring their minds to apply to the Guardians at all. Then it often took weeks before the requirements of the Guardians could be met. Some lost their work through having to attend for the investigation of their casesP The women themselves had great difficulty in obtaining any sort of work because of widespread prejudice against the employment of relatives of alien enemies. Neighbours were unwilling to help with child care in the way they might have for other women. The job had to be within the five mile limit, otherwise the woman needed to go to the police in the morning to get a permit to travel and back to the police when she returned in the evening. Some of the women who had the hardest time were those who were not legally married to the men they were living with, despite the fact that many of those common law relationships were of long standing. Without marriage papers, there was no government grant. Many of the earliest places used as internment camps were THOSE ENEMY ALIENS 9 totally unsuitable and were later condemned and abandoned. For example, at Lancaster, an old wagon factory was used. Seven hundred civilians spent the winter of 1914-15 in one room, with a dirt floor, without heat or artificial light and without any proper bedding or furniture. Sanitary arrangements were primitive and water for washing was scarce. Among the prisoners held there were boys as young as sixteen captured from fishing boatsY Similarly, at the race course at Newbury, the prisoners were housed in the horse boxes, with six to eight men in each stall, lying on straw and without heat or light, locked up at sunset until the next morning. As it became clear that the war would not quickly end, it became equally clear that more permanent camp facilities needed to be created. In early September 1914, a holiday camp in Douglas on the Isle of Man was transformed into an internment camp. Barbed wire fences were erected, gas and electric lighting was installed and guardrooms were built. The prisoners initially slept in tents but were later moved into huts. In October 1914, a second camp was established on the Isle of Man on a farm called Knockaloe Moor. It was originally planned as a camp for 5000 men, but ultimately held 23,000. Eventually 29,000 men were interned on the island. Separated from their families and imprisoned without anything to occupy their time, the men's mental and emotional states began to deteriorate. Some became listless, apathetic, spending the hours lying on the ground or on their beds. Others sought excitement in gambling. Doctors and psychologists began to talk of 'barbed wire disease' in which the men became withdrawn and uncommunicative, paced up and down like caged animals, and often developed delusions or paranoid fantasies. One of the ways in which the Friends' Emergency Committee attempted to intervene was through the provision of occupation. In 1915, the Committee sent James T. Baily, a secondary school craft teacher from Kent, to investigate camp conditions at a camp near Wakefield. We found that a moral rot had set in. Immediate steps were taken by the Friends' Emergency Committee to provide books and magazines, wood-working tools and timber, and leatherworkers' and book-binders' 10 THOSE ENEMY ALIENS equipment; tailors and shoemakers soon got busy with repairs, working for their fellows; even the most unskilled began to turn out simple objects such as blotter pads and writing-cases from scrap cardboard. It was remarkable how soon this organised (but voluntary) labour improved the morale and discipline of the prisoners. The things they made were sold to provide the men with a little money for their families, who had in most cases been left destitute. 14 The Committee sent Baily to Knockaloe. He obtained unpaid leave of absence from his teaching job, and travelled to Knockaloe. When he arrived, the colonel in charge of the camp greeted him with tales of barbed wire disease, of mental illness and of the mischief of idle minds and hands. The Friends' Emergency Committee set out to address the problem. Tools and timber were shipped to Knockaloe. A few men started to work, and then more and more. First they took the opportunity to improve their living quarters and to make equipment for games, libraries, and gardening, to rig up camp theatres, etc. Then small articles of woodwork were made for sale outside the camp, and later this developed into a fairly large-scale production of toys and light furniture, with sales in Great Britain and Ireland, the USA, Sweden, Holland and Denmark. Is Flat pack furniture was also made and sent to France for use by the Friends War Victims Relief Committee for the rebuilding of homes for dispossessed French peasants. Other provision enabled weaving, jewellery making, book binding, knitting, basket making and printing to take place. Prisoners made good use of waste materials - there are some superb vases carved from the bones thrown away by the kitchens. Baily wrote: The bones were first boiled to remove fat, marrow and gristle, then bleached with soda or bleaching powder. Long leg bones were transfigured into slender flower vases decorated with carvings of roses, tulips, lilies or a human figure. The shorter bones were made into pin cushions, ashtrays, match and cigarette stands, table cruets, napkin rings, paper knives and brooches, very delicately carved. 16 In a similar way, the men used flattened bully beef tins as a THOSE ENEMY ALIENS 11 source of metal for mugs, cake tins, candlesticks and so on. Baily was appointed permanent Industrial Adviser to the camp and a Quaker hut was erected just outside the main gates of the camp, as a stores and office. By the time the camps closed, over twenty thousand pounds worth of the men's handicraft productions had been sold by the Emergency Committee, much of it in the form of small articles, selling for a few pennies. Alongside the work at Knockaloe, most of the other camps also had Quaker involvement. In The Friend for 21 May 1915, Robert William Clark, a British Columbia Friend who was working for the Emergency Committee, reported on the work in some of the camps.17 For example at Lancaster, the disused wagon factory, Friends provided educational classes for 340 pupils, including many aged thirteen to eighteen. Twenty-six subjects were taught, with some of the pupils taking from five to eight subjects. 3000 books were collected by Friends for a camp library, including a number of Quaker books, and meetings were held to explain Quaker principles. Clark recorded that around 1200 men used the camp library and that an average of 2800 books were borrowed each month. A carving and art school were formed. Those activities were typical of those carried out in the camps by Friends - education, camp libraries, craft classes and workshops, gardening and religious meetings. Throughout the war, each issue of The Friend, the weekly Quaker magazine, carried reports of the work with the interned Germans and with their families, and appeals for clothing, books, money, games and sports equipment and handicraft materials and tools. These were provided to the camps, along with tools, seeds and plants for gardening work. Lectures were given and several Adult Schools were formed at Knockaloe - Quakers had been very involved in the wider Adult School movement. Some religious services were organised there. As the first Christmas of the war approached, a great effort was made to prepare special tokens and messages of good-will to the interned men, and I have come across, for example, a group of Birmingham Quakers who learned German Christmas carols so that they could sing to the men at Knockaloe. Gift packages were sent to 23,000 interned men in twenty detention camps, each 12 THOSE ENEMY ALIENS containing a permanent present such as a pen-knife, a fountain pen or a pair of mittens, together with tobacco or chocolate or fruit. In return, many Quakers received Christmas cards printed on the camp printing presses. Christmas parties were also held for the wives and children. Quaker support for enemy aliens attracted considerable opposition. At the end of August 1914, for example, the Daily Express ran a headline, 'Aid for the Enemy Only' and in 1916 the Evening News called Quakers 'Hun Coddlers' and accused them of 'waxing rich on German gold'. A threat was made to shoot the Emergency Committee's secretary at sight', 18 although there appear to have been few actual physical attacks on Committee members. Baily's wife was repeatedly insulted. Whenever she took a parcel to the post office to be sent to James Baily at the Isle of Man, it was passed along the counter for everyone to see and to make sarcastic remarks. The local Ashford newspaper described Baily as 'Kent Teacher for Hun Prisoners' and the local education sub-committee passed a resolution calling on the Kent Education Committee to dismiss him. 19 John Bull, a particularly right wing paper with a wide circulation, published a violent attack on Baily and his work, and on the government of the day for allowing it to happen. In spite of the popular opposition, however, the Emergency Committee gained the patronage of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster and other public figures, and worked generally smoothly with the Home Office and the police. 20 Although the Committee was a national body established and supported by Meeting for Sufferings, it was not uncontroversial among Friends. I've been looking at the Preparative Meeting minutes of Coventry meeting for the 1914-18 period. While suggestions that the meeting have a collection for the Friends' Ambulance Unit or the work of Friends' War Victims Relief are always enthusiastically supported, repeated proposals for either a collection or a talk from someone from the Emergency Committee are always minuted as 'We did not see the way forward at this time'. Eventually in 1916, an individual Coventry Friend held a meeting and fundraising event at his home, but the Meeting itself never actively supported the work with the Germans. It would be interesting to know how widespread that I THOSE ENEMY ALIENS 13 attitude was amongst Friends - we can't always judge the mood of the country by central work or articles in The Friend. While the vast majority of the casework carried out by the Emergency Committee was based in London - the largest prewar German community had been in London and many others had relocated there - there were still resident German and Austrian communities in virtually every city across the country. Local committees were therefore established in Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Dublin, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Hull, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Newport, Oxford, Sheffield, South Shields, Sunderland, Wakefield and York. These committees carried out work similar to that carried out by the London office. They generally raised their own funds, although in several cases they also drew on central funds. In addition to this, the London office had about 150 casework visitors spread across the country. In Liverpool, especially at the time of the Lusitania riots, members of the Society of Friends gave shelter to the persecuted wives and children of aliens, both in private homes and in the meeting house where approximately fifty women and children were housed. In Birmingham the local committee organised visits to over 300 local cases, and also supplied the internment camps at the Isle of Man with wood for handicraft work, books and other supplies. In Sheffield, as well as supporting local families, Friends raised money for building camp workshops. In the north, the Northern Friends' Peace Board worked particularly with isolated cases, while Leeds Friends supported those in their own area. Sunderland and South Shields Friends provided camp visitors, did family casework and erected a workshop at the camp in Stobs, in Scotland. Similar work was carried out by groups of Friends across the country. The committee ran an employment register to find work for women and for German and Austrian men who were not interned and who had lost their jobs because of their nationality. Many of these were elderly men - piano repairers, cabinet makers, builders, waiters - and some of the most difficult to place were educated women such as typists, clerks and language teachers. A workshop was set up to employ unemployed tailors to make clothing for French refugees which was distributed in France by the Friends' War Victims Committee. Hilda Schuster and Anna 14 THOSE ENEMY ALIENS Braithwaite Thomas wrote in The Friend, 21 May 1915: It was the tailor problem again. There are many tailors, some of them first-rate hands who have worked long for leading firms - almost all married and with dependent families; no work [ ... ] to be had anywhere. Lately a way has opened [... ] to employ some of them in making boys' clothing for the War Victims' Committee where it was badly needed. Rolls of good material have been bought at a low rate through the help of a Friend. Amongst our tailors we found an expert cutter, and soon, under the supervision of one of our lady workers, in a room lent to us by the War Victims' Committee, he began his task. There were difficulties to be overcome. Some of the tailors had pawned their tools, others had only been accustomed to ladies work [... ] We decided to pay the usual rate in the trade for piece-work, and to give full time work to those employed [... ] Already fifty suits are finished and fifty more are in course of making. They are all for the War Victims' Committee and we take care that our tailors should know that they are working for the poor French refugees made destitute by the war.21 Malcolm Quin, reflecting on the workshops a few years later, wrote: Thus the German tailors were now employed by one of the enemies of Germany in rendering service to another enemy so that the singular and moving spectacle was afforded of three combatant countries which were at that moment carrying on awful enterprises of slaughter and destruction one against another, cooperating in a work of goodwill. While throughout Europe, the statesman, the soldier, the religious minister and the journalist were for the most part either organising an orgy of hatred and devastation or giving it open sanction and applause, the spirit of Christ and humanity was quietly at work in the minds of a few men and women and bringing Englishman, German and Frenchman into an active concord of love and right reason. 22 The work with the tailors continued through 1915, although eventually all of them were sent to the internment camps. Some women were also hired to make children's smocks and, as the THOSE ENEMY ALIENS 15 men were interned, to make other garments as well. Eventually 90 women were employed. From the beginning of the work in March 1915 to June 1916, the workshop made and sent to the Friends' Committee for the Relief of War Victims: • 2647 pairs of trousers • 1034 boys' suits • 42 boys' overcoats • 17 pairs of boys' knickers • 5230 garments for women and children By the summer of 1916, halfway through the war, the Friends' Emergency Committee was well established and was registered by the London County Council as a War Charity in good standing. 23 By that point, a number of sub-committees and departments had been set up to focus on particular areas of the work. Casework continued with families. The aim was to visit each family at least once a month, and grants of milk, coals, blankets, clothing and financial help were given. The work was carried out by forty workers, 200 volunteer visitors in the London area and another 150 volunteers across the country (plus the local committee volunteers referred to earlier). In the same way, the Committee continued to visit the men in the camps, to support Baily's work at Knockaloe, to arrange for the sale of handicrafts and to appeal for and supply handicraft materials, gardening materials and books. Four holiday homes for children were set up and children were sent for one to three months at a time. By 1917, over 700 children had been sent by the Committee to the country or the seaside, returning usually much healthier and better fed than when they went away. A Mothers' Rest Home was established in Highgate, providing rest and recuperation for women who had reached the end of their tether. Summer outings and Christmas parties and parcels were arranged for the families each year. A special department was set up to deal with pawnshops and luggage, getting back for people belongings they had pawned in desperation and retrieving things left behind by men sent to the internment camps. Another department provided legal advice. Friends around the country sent clothing - some of it used, other made or bought specially and a clothing store sorted and distributed it. This proved particularly useful just after the 16 THOSE ENEMY ALIENS Lusitania riots when it 'was besieged by people who had been robbed of everything they possessed - in one case, even to the wet garments which had been washed overnight and hung in the kitchen to dry'. At the Armistice in November 1918, 24,450 men were in Knockaloe. Only sixteen percent of those were permitted to take up residence again in Britain. It took nearly a year to send the others back to the lands of their birth. The involvement of the Friends' Emergency Committee continued into 1919 as they organised German classes for English wives travelling with their repatriated husbands, arranged for parcels of food to be sent by relatives in Britain to those women who had made the journey to Germany and attempted to secure employment for enemy aliens remaining in Britain. The British government confiscated all property and belongings in Britain of ex-prisoners as partpayment of the war indemnity payable by enemy countries. Baily travelled through Germany in 1920 as part of the Quaker post-war relief work, and he told of meetings with ex-Knockaloe prisoners and their wives, who were bitter and saddened by the loss of the homes and household goods that they had built up during their many years in England. /." Engraving of Knockaloe Camp, Isle Of Man Made by German Pow, 1918 I '/", ' THOSE ENEMY ALIENS 17 Now let us take a step back and think about representation and historiography. What I have given you has been taken almost entirely from Quaker sources, and using those sources, the Quaker contribution certainly seems to be considerable. But the Quaker involvement with the camps has been almost entirely missing from recent historical work. In particular, Panikos Panayi, who has done very substantial and valuable work on German civilian and combatant internees during the First World War, rarely mentions Quakers or the FEC in any of his more recent writings. There are two paragraphs about Baily and the FEC in his major 2013 book, Prisoners of Britain, for example, but Quakers are not included in discussions of education, religion or Christmas and neither Quakers generally nor the FEC specifically appear in the index. The same is true of most other journal articles and books about the internment camp experience, with the exception of Yvonne Cresswell's work on Knockaloe and craft. 24 This raises questions for me, which I think have broader application for all of us when we are looking at representations of what we might call the 'hidden stories' of World War I. I am struggling to evaluate how significant or insignificant the Quaker interventions actually were. Are they missing from the historiography because historians just didn't notice them, or because they really weren't very important? Does the fact that they were a religious group lead to their marginalisation when we write the history of the times? Is there a more general gap around the whole area of religious philanthropy and World War I? Most historians make brief reference to the single contemporary published book about Quakers and alien enemies25 and to a 1959 biography of Baily. Little use has been made of The Friend or the archives in Friends House. Do I perceive the Quaker involvement as more significant than it was because I am seeing it through the Quaker lens, understanding it through their representations of themselves? Or am I seeing something that other people haven't seen, precisely because I am looking at it from another direction? And how do we measure or assess the impact of a philanthropic intervention? Beyond those questions, there is a real need for more research on the local committees and local Quaker involvement with German families and internment camps. The sources that I've 18 THOSE ENEMY ALIENS used, other than Coventry Meeting, are central ones. Particularly in the cities where there were local committees, there may well be considerable information in minute books and preparative and monthly meeting archives. It would be really valuable if historians of Quakerism could begin to explore those sources of information, so that we can build a fuller picture of what was happening. Betty Hagglund Presidential address given during Britain Yearly Meeting at Friends House London, May 2015 THOSE ENEMY ALIENS 19 END NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. Panikos Panayi, German Immigrants in Britain during the 19th century 1815-1914 (Oxford: Berg, 1995); Panikos Panayi, The Enemy in Our Midst (London: Bloomsbury, 1991), pp. 16-20. Panikos Panayi, 'An Intolerant Act by an Intolerant Society: the internment of Germans in Britain during the First World War', in David Cesarani and Tony Kushner, The Internment of Aliens in Twentieth Century Britain (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 53. Arnold D. McNair, Essays and Lectures upon some Legal Effects ofWar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1920), p. 2l. Anonymous, cited in Richard van Emden, Meeting the Enemy: the human face of the Great War (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), p.32. Panayi, 'An Intolerant Act', p. 56; John Walling, The Internment and Treatment of German Nationals during the 1st World War (Great Grimsby: Riparion Publishing, 2005), p. 7. William R. Hughes, Sophia Sturge (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1940), p. 124. Anna Braithwaite Thomas and others, St Stephen's House (London: published by the Emergency Committee for the Assistance of Germans, Austrians and Hungarians in Distress, [1920]), pp. 16; 20. Mark Bostridge, The Fateful Year: England 1914 (London: Viking, 2014), p. 312. Thomas, St Stephen's House, p. 91. Ibid. Anna Thomas, Friends' Emergency Committee Annual Report, 1916. Thomas, St Stephen's House, pp. 84-85. Panayi,' An Intolerant Act', p. 64. Leslie Baily, Craftsman and Quaker: the story of James T. Baily (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1959), pp. 88-89. Ibid, pp. 93-94. Ibid, p. 100. Robert William Clark, 'Work in the Concentration Camps', The Friend, 21 May 1915, pp. 386-387. Thomas, St. Stephen's House, p. 22. 20 THOSE ENEMY ALIENS 19. Baily, p. 96. 20. John Ormerod Greenwood, Quaker Encounters: Volume 1, Friends and Relief (York: Sessions, 1975), p. 216. 21. Hilda Schuster & Anna Braithwaite Thomas, 'The Employment Problem', The Friend, 21 May 1915, pp. 385-386. 22. Malcolm Quin, quoted in Thomas, St. Stephen's House, p. 133. 23. Thomas, St. Stephen's House, p. 99. 24. Yvonne Cresswell, Living With the Wire: Civilian Internment in the Isle of Man During the Two World Wars (Douglas: Manx National Heritage, 2010); Yvonne Cresswell, 'Behind the Wire: the material culture of civilian internment on the Isle of Man in the First World War' in Richard Dove (ed.), 'Totally un-English'? Britain's Internment of 'Enemy Aliens' in Two World Wars (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 200S), pp. 4S-62. 2S. Thomas, St. Stephen's House. The illustrations on the cover (LSF FEWVRC pics/l0/7/1) and page 16 (LSF FEWVRC pics/l0/4/7) are from the Friends Emergency & War Victims Committee (FEWVRC) archive © Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Britain. 21 PENINGTON AND POLITICS: THREE PAMPHLETS CONSIDERED. Isaac Penington is revered as one of the great Quaker writers on spiritual matters; his spiritual writings were brought to our attention anew in 2005 in the inspirational account of Keiser and Moore.1 However it is easy to overlook the significance of his contribution to political thought at a crucial moment of the British revolution of 1650-1653. While James Nayler's involvement with the parliamentary army has been acknowledged - for example in David Neelon's contribution to Quaker Studies in 20012 - I am not aware of any similar appraisal of Isaac Penington's contribution from within the parliamentary side's political wing. Even the substantial and authoritative work of Kate Peters, also published in 2005, fails to give credit to Penington, one of the highest placed early recruits to the Quaker movement, yet Penington's religion sprang from his politics just as much as his politics sprang from his religion. 3 His political career effectively came to an end when he advocated waiting in the Light, waiting for God's instructions, at a time when circumstances seemed to dictate immediate and decisive action. Penington not only advocated a division of powers between legislature, executive and administration but was possibly the first 'modern' Englishman to suggest that the head of state might be elected by the representatives of the people. His proposals were th~ critical bridge between a monarchy headed by a king by right of inheritance and a republic headed by an elected president. During the years of their publication, the younger Isaac was clearly and identifiably working on behalf of his father, a key figure in the revolution and a crucial member of the Council of State then setting out to rule the British Isles. In this article I will describe Isaac Penington's position, outline the pamphlets, place them in the context of the constitutional debates and show the moment of separation between Penington and Cromwell's pragmatic advisers. I will show that Penington's background and activities prior to his marriage to Mary Springett should not be ignored by any who hope to understand the later Quaker or the roots of the anger with which he was persecuted by cavaliers restored to power. 22 PENINGTON AND POLITICS Penington's father is too easily dismissed from his son's story.4 Isaac Penington senior inherited considerable wealth but he also added to it through both trading activities and judicious marriages. He served a political apprenticeship as political secretary to his kinsman Admiral Sir John Penington at the opening of Charles I's reign; it was a role that brought him into close contact with those developing and implementing political policy and which consolidated Penington's views on the importance of the king working closely with parliament, something Charles conspicuously failed to do. Penington senior acquired The Grange, Chalfont St. Peter, a place later to be made famous by his son as a centre for Quaker evangelism. 5 Chalfont was a community with a history of dissent dating back to Lollard times. It was at Chalfont that the new owner began a lasting dispute with Archbishop Laud. Laud objected to Penington's appointment of a radical preacher, one not to Laud's liking. Penington senior became an implacable political and religious opponent of the Archbishop. He saw Laud as someone intent on using his closeness to the king to hold back if not to turn back the still-flowing tide of protestant reformation. As Keeper of the Tower of London, Penington senior was to lead Laud out onto the scaffold for execution. As a member of parliament for the City of London, Penington senior was to help precipitate the civil wars. He, with the backing of Cromwell, Pym and others, refused Charles access to City money until he accepted their radical demands. When Charles tried to arrest five leading MPs, it was to Penington's parish - and probably his home - that they fled for refuge. 6 It was Penington who led an armed mob thousands strong out onto the streets of London and Westminster to 'protect' MPs so that they could accept the Root and Branch petition calling for the abolition of bishops? Penington became Lord Mayor of London in an internal coup and personally led the defence of the city against Charles's troopS.8 To pay for the work and for money to support the Parliamentary army, Penington devised and implemented levies on all who could pay; he sequestered 'Royalist' estates and assets within the City and became recognised as the leader of the War Party within the city.9 Royalist pamphlets branded him a traitor. The king himself was said to have condemned 'the pretended lord mayor' as 'the principal author of those PENINGTON AND POLITICS 23 calamities' .10 He denied the charge, vehemently insisting he had no quarrel with the king, only his advisers. It was a denial in a standard form but it may, in the mid-1640s, have had some substance. l l As the years of strife went by, Alderman Penington struggled to help find a settlement to the conflict. He was closely in touch with Cromwell throughout this time supporting Oliver's opposition to both the far left and the Royalist right. Getting the balance 'right' was a life and death affair. He was selected by the Cromwellians to take control of London once more after an abortive counter coup against the New Model Army and subsequently retained his parliamentary seat when the Army purged it of those thought to be unacceptable to the regimeY After the second civil war collapsed, Alderman Penington served on the commission which tried the King. He seems to have supported the idea of the trial but he did not sign the death warrant. He was not, quite, the regicide which resurgent cavaliers were to call him. Despite this, following the execution of the king and the abolition of the House of Lords, he was elected by what was left of Parliament to serve on the first Council of State. Within the Council he took a special responsibility for financial affairs and relations with the City of London, critical matters if the beleaguered republic was to survive. Detailed analysis of references to Penington in the Calendar of State Papers, reveals him to have been the government's specialist in sequestering estates and assets from 'Royalists' and wringing the last penny in levies and taxes from City magnates, all skills he had honed as Lord MayorP There is also evidence that he promoted support for the new Commonwealth in the pamphlet wars that were a feature of the war years. One particularly influential pamphleteer was the radical cleric, John Goodwin. Penington had been responsible for giving him his London base when he recruited him to his home parish of St. Stephen's Coleman Street in the 1630s. Penington's hand can be seen behind Goodwin's dismissal from the parish when Goodwin's independent views became politically unacceptable in the mid-1640s. Now, in 1649, Goodwin published support for the new regime in Right and Might Well Mett and Penington found a way to accommodate the exile back within St. Stephen's.14 There is no evidence that the Penington/Goodwin 24 PENINGTON AND POLITICS dispute was over a split between them over the relative merits of Calvinism and Arminianism or that Penington junior backed the cleric against his father. Relations between Penington senior and Goodwin were complex and fraught but the overwhelming reason for both dismissal and the subsequent recall was political. Despite his contribution to the revolution, or rather, because of it, Alderman Penington was subjected to a cruel, anonymous, libel, Hosanna: or a Song of Thanksgiving sung by the Children of Zion and set forth in three notable Speeches at Grocers-Hall on the late Solemn Day of Thanksgiving, Thursday June 7, 1649.15 This pamphlet purports to set out the three main speeches given at a City of London civic banquet on 7 June 1649. Thanhe event was planned and happened is attested by the Calendar of State Papers. 16 The three speakers were the radical cleric Hugh Peters, Alderman Thomas Atkins and Alderman Penington. It had been intended that both the Aldermen should be knighted by the Speaker of Parliament using the Ceremonial Sword of the City of London. Whether the dubbing of the knights actually happened we do not know. Penington is described as Sir Isaac in all British Library records; Lindley in the ODNB agrees that Penington was knighted but puts the date at 1657 for reasons he does not explain and post-Restoration authorities at the City of London insist that no-one could have been knighted because the Commonwealth regime did not have the authority to do such things. Nevertheless, the dinner was an important state occasion, probably the first such since the execution of the king. Reginald Sharpe interprets the event also as a celebration of the suppression of the Levellers17 but the event was primarily the City of London's endorsement of the legitimacy of the regicidal regime. The choice of Atkins and Penington as guests of honour at such an event underlines the importance of the roles they had played in the revolution since its beginning. The Libel clearly saw nothing to celebrate but plenty to mock. Alderman Penington is portrayed as a stereotypical pious puritan and a bit of a buffoon. He is also made to declare, 'Moses was a man slow of speech, yet he was a great leader and so have I been'. If he indeed was slow of speech', the politician Penington may well have welcomed his son Isaac as an Aaron at this crucial moment in state affairs. By the time the three 'Penington' political pamphlets I PENINGTON AND POLITICS 25 appeared, Isaac Penington junior was already in his prime and had published a number of religious tracts. His background and maturity at this time were perceptively commented on by Joseph Gurney Bevan in his Memoir of Isaac Penington. Isaac had been 'heir [... ] to a fair inheritance'. He had benefited from a good education' as well as such arose from the conversation of some of the most knowing and considerable men of the time.' Isaac senior had, continued Bevan, been 'a violent partisan' in the 'civil commotions'. The son 'might probably soon have arisen to eminence in the republic' but chose religion instead. In his preQuaker tracts 'he looked for the cause of the evil rather in the depraved state of man's heart in general than in any particular party or set of men.' When Isaac wrote Fundamental Right etc, says Bevan, he 'was more than thirty years of age. They are not, therefore, to be considered as the mere effusions of an ingenuous youthful mind but as the result of observation and judgement, operating as a mind amply endowed with philanthropy and piety'.IS As we shall see, Isaac's mind was also endowed with considerable knowledge and understanding of politics. Born to Isaac Penington senior and his first wife, Abigail, in 1616, Isaac junior entered the Inner Temple in 1634 and was called to the Bar in 1639; in between he studied at St. Catherine's College, Cambridge, though he appears not to have taken a degree. What did Isaac junior do next? His brother, William, became a merchant like his father, Isaac did not. It is probable that he contributed his legal skills to the family project: documents held at Shropshire Archives show him acting in a legal capacity on behalf of his father in Hilary Term, 1650. The Shropshire business involved negotiations over a marriage contract with Richard More, a leading puritan landowner and MP from Shropshire. 19 Isaac junior'S own marriage - on 13 March 1654 - was not at St. Stephen's Coleman Street, the family church, but at the parliament church of st. Margaret, Westminster.2o The implications are that Isaac junior was indeed involved in his father's business, the business of politics. Certainly this would help to explain the very different discourse apparent in his 'political' pamphlets from that in his works of spiritual 26 PENINGTON AND POLITICS searching. How much those political pamphlets were his own and how much merely work produced on behalf of his father is open to question. But Isaac junior was prepared publicly to acknowledge authorship of those pamphlets. Equally there can be no doubt that the first two pamphlets at least would have met with his father's approval and served his political needs. They would also have met with approval in the government circles in which Isaac senior operated; the pamphlets used a language which not only reflected Cromwellian concerns and attitudes but promoted a constitutional proposal which would legitimise assumption of supreme power by a Cromwell-figure. The first of the 'political' pamphlets to appear under Isaac Penington's name was A Word for the Common WealeY The printed date of publication is 1650.22 Authorship is ascribed to 'Isaac Penington, esquire'; British Library catalogues assert the author is 'Sir Isaac Pennington' and Quaker historian Douglas Gwyn omits the work from Isaac junior'S canon. However Isaac junior himself includes the piece (marked 'out of print'), in a list of his works published in Divine Essays in 1654. The piece contrasts in every way with a collection of sermons, Light or Darknesse dated 22 May 1650 which credits the author as 'Isaac Penington Gunior) Esquire'.23 A larger question than who actually wrote the text is who the reader of A Word for the Common Weale was expected to assume the author to be. At that moment, Isaac Penington junior may already have acquired a following for his spiritual writings but it was his father who was the famed politician. Alderman Penington was deeply and publicly embroiled in the dispute over the future of The Rump and over constitutional reform. These are precisely the issues tackled in A Word to the Common Weale. The major theme of A Word for the Common Weale was shaped by the dispute between parliament and the government, that is, the Council of State. Alderman Penington, a member of the Long Parliament since its first election and a leading Parliamentarian for nearly a decade, was nevertheless clearly identifiable as a man of the Government. In the traumatic weeks after Pride's Purge, there had been a general expectation that the Rump would be dissolved and PENINGTON AND POLITICS 27 new elections held by 30 April 1649. Instead it was still there and still arguing. 'This nation was very sick, a Parliament much desired to cure it, many hopes and expectations fastened upon their endeavours, but now most men are grown sick both of the Physicians and the cure', says the writer of A Word. 24 Penington castigates the Rump for its 'Multitude of affairs, Prolixity in your motions, and want of an orderly Government of your own body'. It was tempted to tackle or do things 'which might be better managed by other hands'. Like the country itself, it was riven by party and faction. Can we not be happy, he asks, unless someone sits on a throne and makes others sit as slaves underneath? This Preface has a prophetic ring to it that is, on the whole, missing from the document itself; it shares with Light or Darknesse a sense of the apocalyptic. Do people expect God to come along and sort everything out? If that happens, it will not just be those that disagree with you that will be judged but you yourself, warns Penington. God - described as 'the unknown Potter' in Light and Darknesse - may well be shaking up all things, destroying all certainties, so that people might rediscover the need to love each other. But beyond this Preface, Penington bases his comments and proposals on a view of constitutional foundations based on natural law; the People have a duty based on their duty of self-preservation to set up sound Government and require accountability for the trust placed in it.25 The main text reviews the struggles of the past ten years or so and tries to set out a pattern of government that will resolve issues. The strife had been about recovering rights and liberties with the aim of achieving' a righteous administration of Government'. To meet that aim, three things were needed: good laws; proper hands to exercise those laws; and 'an exact rule or way' to guide those hands. The laws were to set' the proper bounds of right and liberty' and the proper balance between individual rights and public welfare. Those laws needed to be certain, open, accessible and easily understood. But' execution is the life of the law'. It is not the law that affrights or encourages but execution of it,26 The threat to liberty and safety was now, as it had been under the king, from arbitrary rule. To prevent arbitrary government creeping in, legislative and executive powers must be separated. 28 PENINGTON AND POLITICS 'The late King' may have gone astray because there was not a clear Rule within which the Government was required to work. Now the danger was of arbitrary rule by Parliament. A Parliament 'may far more easily err in Government' even than the King and Council. Parliament was now trying to 'intermeddle' with matters of government. Its task was not to try to run things itself but to settle government in good hands and within fixed boundaries and to make laws only to fill in gaps to meet unforeseen situations. The 'Safety of the People' rested in the government set up to protect their welfare. But the safety of the government rested in its having strict limits and abiding by them, otherwise government became 'burdensome and Tyrannous'. Parliament unbounded would 'cut out all but its own Sovereignty'.27 It is no use simply getting rid of what seems a heavy hand, suggests Penington; each time it takes a stronger hand to get rid of the lesser: the stronger the hand the weightier the burdens it can impose. There is no trusting any man or any sort of man; you must look into the basic problem - the lack of a Rule and boundaries. Government and Parliament must allow themselves to be chained up like a lion or a wolf. Calling people to any office, investing them with power, without setting clear and distinct limits to that power will' sow the seeds of Tyranny'. And if the People had omitted to set such limits then Parliament had a duty to do the job for them. Parliament is accountable to the People through natural right 'which nature teacheth all'. But how could people know whether 'Privileges of Parliament' are sweeping up their own 'Rights and Liberties' unless those privileges are clearly set out? Penington warns of a crisis of trust between people and parliament equal to that between king and parliament. And he asks: will the People rise up against Parliament or will Parliament use the Army to 'Stop the mouths of the people'?28 Penington's prescription is clear: separation of powers and a clear Rule to guide all. The time was ripe for 'the true foundations of freedom and righteousness to be laid' but Penington is left with the conundrum that change seemed to be dependent on the very Parliament that was threatening to abuse its trust. 29 Fundamental Right, Safety and Liberty of the People, by far the most extensive of the three Penington political tracts, exists in two editions. The first appeared in 1651. This, with a new cover but PENINGTON AND POLITICS 29 otherwise unchanged, was re-issued in 1657. The one difference between the two editions is the name of the printer: in the first edition, attribution is to 'Printed by John Macock and are to be sold by Giles Calvert at the West end of Paul's'. In 1657 this reads 'Printed for Giles Calvert and are to be sold at the Black-spread Eagle at the West end of Paul's.'30 The year 1657 was a significant one in Alderman Penington's political and private lives but how the re-print relates to either is not clear. As with A Word to the Common Weale the central theme is the need to find and establish 'proper bounds of right and liberty'.31 Penington again takes a providentialist view of the turmoil of the preceding decade and acknowledges that only God can bring about righteous government. But he insists that in the meantime people had to press 'as near towards righteousness as possibly ye may'. Though he addresses 'the sorrowing People', Penington shows he has no great hopes from 'The common people [... ] who receive things by rumors and common reports, without examining or scanning whether things be so or no.' This is a passage that reflects Penington's experiences in the tumultuous events of 1647. He continues: it is not simply that governors do not govern righteously, their inferiors' doth not obey righteously' either. The People, therefore, were as capable of error as any parliament, government or king. The People's task was to choose governments and governors. That responsibility rested in 'every people' and was theirs of right. However, no single form of government could fit all societies and any constitution would require amendment. The form of government appropriate to any society must be determined by men guided by 'the true light of Reason'. At the heart of a just society was the Law. A free people did not have laws imposed upon it but voluntarily submitted to laws that were for their welfare. Those laws were made and amended by the men chosen by the people to sit in parliament. Those parliamentarians must be as subject to the laws they made as everybody else; governments and governors (including kings, implies the pamphlet) should not be above the law but must suffer the consequences of their decisions. Parliament, the representative of the people, must be free and freely elected. The pamphlet expresses concern about the role of the Army and the extent to which it had made it difficult for 30 PENINGTON AND POLITICS Parliament to reach independent decisions. There is a curious ambivalence about the extent to whiCh the Army could purge parliament before the latter lost its credibility. The difficulty for the older Penington was that he both approved of and had benefited from Army interventions in Parliamentary affairs. The son's pamphlet sets out the need for bounds and limits for people and parliament and ruler alike but shuns the task of defining such rules for the Army. Did he assume that the Army would not feature in the longer term future of the country or did he feel that it was beyond his - or anyone else's - capacity to set limits to its role? Either way Penington's silence on the issue is significant. Penington did feel able to set rules for parliaments: they must not be over-long because MPs would forget where they came from and pursue their own interests. Parliament would become a standing power in its own right - who then would protect the people? How could Parliament act properly as 'Judges on behalf of the Commonwealth'? If it became the standing power itself, how could it be a curb for itself? 'The people are in as much danger of them, as they were of the Power of Kings: for it is not the person simply, but the power, wherein the danger or benefit lieth.' Penington insists that there should be a separation between religious and secular government: no parliament could be so assured that it represented the wishes and will of Christ as to be able to rule the church. But while warning Parliament against . medling with spiritual affairs' Penington equally warns religious factions to keep their hands off Parliament. 'The Presbyterian is now engaged indissoluably to use his utmost strength and endevor towards the advancing of Presbytery, which is God's instituted way of worship in his eye; and so the Independent of Independency which is Christ's Institution in his eye.'32 There must be a clear distinction between parliament, government and administration to provide the checks and balances necessary for the safety of the people. There must be clear distinction between administrative, executive and judicative powers with distinct limits and responsibilities for each. Within this new constitution there might be a place for 'kingly government' a single governor presiding over government and parliament. 'For my part, though I shall not plead for the resettlement of Kingly Government [... ] yet I would have a fair PENINGTON AND POLITICS 31 and friendly shaking hands with it, and not any blame layd upon it beyond its desert.' Penington calls for a legal inquiry (undertaken by learned lawyers like Penington junior) into kingly government, to see where it went wrong and where its limits ought to be. A similar inquiry might be held into parliamentary government. The problem, says Penington, is not kingly versus parliamentary government but keeping them both within clearly defined limits. The King had had experience on his side but there had to be a way to resolve disputes between King and People. 33 It is now, here, almost at the end of the document, that Penington makes his most revolutionary comments. The closest Britain had come to a achieving a lasting peace settlement between Charles I and the Army that opposed him was set out in a document known as Heads of Proposals. 34 That settlement was destroyed by the renewal of armed conflict. The Heads ofProposals had suggested that the King should become a constitutional monarch ruling through a council and parliament. Isaac Penington now revived, and modified, this proposal. Neither birth right nor divine right, were required characteristics of the One Man who would rule with a council and parliament as set out in the Heads of Proposals. The One Man would be qualified by his ability to serve. The qualities of a good governor were the ability to manage his trust with all care and fidelity and to settle the foundations of society. Powerful non-royals had ruled England frequently in the past as regents and Lords Protector. Penington's vision went beyond this: his elected One Man might not be simply a stop-gap until a young prince became old enough to rule as Monarch; the post might be a perpetual feature of a constitutional republic. There is much detail of interest in Fundamental Right: those interested in Penington junior's subsequent career as a leader of Quakers will be interested in the lack of enthusiasm for decisionmaking by voting and surprised to see the enthusiasm for oathtaking - many of Penington junior's years in prison were the consequence of his refusal to take oaths of any kind. The last of the political' pamphlets here ascribed to Isaac Penington junior makes no attempt to offer practical solutions to constitutional problems. It has an air of expectant desperation about it. A Considerable Question about Government carries the date I 32 PENINGTON AND POLITICS 1653 and seems to have been published in the spring of that year in the wake of Cromwell's dismissal of the Rump Parliament. The question it asks is set out on the title page: 'Which is better both for the Good, Safety and Welfare, both of the Governors and Governed, Absolute or Limited Authority'.35 Absoluteness is defined as a full power of Government without interruption, without rendering an account, residing in the Brest, Will or Conscience of the Governor or Governors' adding 'Limitation is a circumscribing of this power within such bounds as the people for whose sake and benefit government is, shall think fit to consine it unto for their good and safety'. 'Now without controversie', writes Penington, "great is the advantage of Absoluteness both to the Governors in the execution of their Duty and to the People towards the reaping of the fruits of Government'. All will be well so long as those who govern are 'men of knowledge and integrity, whose judgements and consciences are not liable to be deceived or perverted'. But 'because of man's corruption [... ] it is impossible this should be rightly ordered and administered. And we find dayly that by Absoluteness in Government the People are exposed to slavery, their liberties, yea their very lives, subjected, not to righteousness in another but to the corruption of another. So Absoluteness of Government, take it as the state of things now stands, is no other then a giving up of estates, liberties and lives of the People into the jaws of unrighteousness, into the hands of a selfish power: By now, Penington has low expectations of any government: Parliament had sprung up undertaking' to rectify that which was crooked in the foregoing Government'; then 'the Army seemeth to rise up with a more excellent Spirit than they' but who knew what their intentions were? He warns the governed to expect nothing of their Governors but to rest in the belief that 'The Lord will deal with those that oppress you [... ] Who hath shaken this State? Is it not the Lord?' Almost at his conclusion he writes: 'There is indeed a great truth now held forth: that the Saints shall govern the world'. Even here Penington can see little cause for hope: if those Saints are 'not in the truth' or should take on the responsibilities of government before the Millennium actually arrives then the country would see 'the greatest unrighteousness established by the strongest and most unrighteous Law.' 'Oh, that this so long-captive-nation could lift up their eyes I PENINGTON AND POLITICS 33 towards, and wait for, the Salvation of God.' This waiting on God was an approach Penington might well have expected to have been shared by Oliver Cromwell. As J.e. Davis has pointed out 'Cromwell was saturated in the providentialism of his contemporaries [ ... ] The Cromwellian regime has frequently been criticised for an absence of clear policy objectives and of management strategies for their realization. But such criticism overlooks the fact that reliance on providence implied, in one sense, the absence of policy[ ... ]' 36 In later years, especially immediately before and immediately after the Restoration, Penington would publish further pamphlets addressed to Parliament, Army, King and other secular authorities. They were invariably appeals for freedom of conscience and religious toleration. Never again would they be written from the inside of politics or offer practical proposals: the new regime, or at least that element within it articulated by Marchmont Nedham, in The True Case, had little time for those who stood by and waited for things to be resolved. 'If we falter, or be mis-led through phantisie, or if that fail through our default, we are immediately swallowed up by Tyrannie, and have nothing left to do but to put our mouths in the dust, and sit down in sorrow and silence for the glory of our nation.'37 Events then, as now, dictated action. After the publication of A Considerable Question, Isaac Penington senior assumed a back seat in politics. Did he do so because he shared his son's view that it was better to do nothing than to act before one was convinced about the direction God wished one to go? The Alderman was nominated to the Parliament of Saints - Barebones Parliament - but absented himself from the elections. Despite many years of close working with Cromwell, no new role emerged for him under the Protectorate. Penington senior lost his main political power base when he lost his Aldermanic seat on the City Corporation. His income had fallen below the required level. The causes of his financial situation were undoubtedly complex. He was old by contemporary standards; he had settled considerable assets on his son Isaac and presumably on his other children, too. His problems may not have had anything at all to do with the accusations made against him that some of the Royalist assets had stuck to his own fingers during the sequestration process. 34 PENINGTON AND POLITICS The accusations were pursued through the courts and Penington appealed to the Council of State for protection but there is no evidence that his fears that he would be bankrupted by the actions were ever realised. Penington senior did not hide away. He did not retire from politics. In 1649 he had been placed on the body which took over Westminster Abbey and Westminster School from the old Dean and Chapter. He was still active on that body in 1657 when he signed papers relating to the school,38 and when the Long Parliament was recalled in 1659, he again took his seat. Isaac Penington's 'political' pamphlets of the early 1650s reveal him to be very much a child of his time and, in the eyes of the rest of the political community, a colleague and associate of his father. Isaac junior shared the conviction, almost universally held in Britain at the time, that God was actively shaking the foundations of society and rebuilding the nation. He may also have shared the widespread belief in an imminent Millennium when either God would return to rule his earth or his selected saints would begin a thousand year rule to prepare the way for his coming. There is evidence that Isaac was in touch with religious radicals but sceptical about their wilder speculations; a fragment of a letter to one such, Abiezer Cop(pe), is in the John Penington collection at Friends House Library London. 39 His Considerable Question about Government is hardly a ringing approval of Saintly rule. Whatever his subsequent relationship with his father, it was clearly a close, working one at the time of the British revolution. Isaac junior was closely identified with his father and his father's politics. Penington senior's death in custody in the Tower of London after the Restoration was deemed to be sufficiently significant for parliamentary proceedings to be interrupted so members could be informed of the news. Thus cheated of the opportunity to try and execute the father, who had plundered, allegedly to his personal benefit, so many Royalist estates, there must have been a temptation for aggrieved cavaliers to vent their retrospective anger on the son who had so publicly and so recently associated himself with the regicide's politics. Isaac Penington's political views deserve serious consideration in their own right and in our own time. He had interesting and challenging things to say about the rule of law, democracy, PENINGTON AND POLITICS 35 tyranny, constitutional checks and balances, and the practical problems of incorporating religion and religious commitment into the business of government. And his final dilemma is increasingly relevant today: with all sides of a fundamental conflict believing that God is remaking the world, how do you discern where the truth lies? How do you decide how to act? Peter Smith 36 PENINGTON AND POLITICS END NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. R. Melvin Keiser and Rosemary Moore's Knowing the Mys- tery of the Life Within: Selected Writings of Isaac Penington in their Historical and Theological Context (London: Quaker Books, 2005) was published after most of the work on which this article is based had been completed. David Neelon, 'James Nayler in the English Civil Wars' Quaker Studies Vol.6 No.1 September 2001 pp. 8-36. Kate Peters, Print Culture and the Early Quakers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). For biographical details of Isaac Penington, senior; I have drawn on Keith Lindley's article 'Isaac Penington c15841661, local politician and regicide' in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography on-line; on Valerie Pearl, London and the Outbreak of the Puritan Revolution: City Government and National Politics, 1625-1643 (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1961); D. Brunton and D.H. Pennington, Members of the Long Parliament (London, Allen & Unwin, 1954) and extensive reading in the House of Commons Journal; other primary sources are listed below. Earlier biographies referred to are listed in the bibliography below. Reference was also made to Andrew Thrush, 'Sir John Penington c1583-1646' in the ODNB Pearl, p. 18L Lindley in ODNB Austin Woolrych, Britain in Revolution 1625-1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) p. 169. Pamphlets issued by Penington as Lord Mayor attest to this, see: Thomason/E.1l8 [29] and of 23 September 1642 and a broadside of 12 November 1642 Wing/L2878A. to supplement reports by Lindley in ODNB and others, for example, Pearl. Valerie Pearl is particularly strong on Penington's role at this stage, see Pearl, particularly pp. 179-181 and 198-206. J. Rushworth, Historical Collections (London, 1721) Vol. 5, p. llL 11. 'Mr.Fowke' The Declaration and vindication ofIsaack Pennington, now Lord Mayor of the citie of London etc [... ] (London, 1643) Thomason/15.E.89[11]. PENINGTON AND POLITICS 37 12 House of Commons Journal Vol. 6, p. 254. 13. Calendar of State Papers, volumes for 1649-50; 1651; 1651-52; 1652-53 and 1655. 14. John Goodwin Right and Well Mett (London, January 1649); Thomason/E536 [28] and Tai Lui Puritan London: A Study of Religion and Society in the City Parishes (Delaware: University of Delaware Press, 1986) p. 45. 15. Thomason/E.559 [11]. 16. CSPD Vol. 1649-50 p175. 17. Reginald R. Sharpe, London and the Kingdom: A History Derived Mainly from the Archives at Guildhall in the Custody of the Corporation of the City of London (London: Longmans, Green & Co, 1894) Vol. 2 p. 312. 18. Joseph Gurney Bevan. Memoirs of the Life of Isaac Penington (Philadelphia, USA: T. Kite, 1831) pp. 13-14. 19. Shropshire Archives: The More Collection, mortgages and marriage settlements, ref. 1037/10/30 and 31 (1650-51). 20. Richard L. Greaves and Robert Zaller Biographical Dictionary of British Radicals in the seventeenth century (Brighton: Harvester, 1982-84). 21. Isaac Penington, A Word for the Common Weale (1649) Thomason/E.593 [10]. 22. This has been amended in the British Library copy which bears the date Feb 15, 1649, presumably the date the copy was acquired by Thomason. In 'Old Style' dates, the difference is of only a month. 23. Divine Essays Wing/P1162; Light or Darknesse Thomason/E.602[1 ] 24. Isaac Penington, A Word for the Common Weale p. 1. 25. Ibid., p. 13. 26. Ibid., p. 7. 27. Ibid., p. 11. 28. Ibid., p. 15. 29. Ibid., p. 18. 30. Isaac Penington (Junior) Esq., The Fundamental Right, Safety and Liberty of the People (1651). Thomason/E.629[2] and (1657) Wing/P1169A. Calvert was in trouble in Newgate briefly in 1652. He had first published a pamphlet by Isaac Penington junior in 1648. Calvert's list of authors (as listed by the ODNB) in the years immediately before 1651 included 38 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. PENINGTON AND POLITICS Walwyn, Lilburne and Peters; Gerrard Winstanley; Coppe, Coppin and Clarkson. Calvert was associated with a group called 'My one flesh' and was instrumental in introducing Clarkson to this group. By 1657 he was the printer of preference to the people called Quakers. Penington's first Quaker publication is usually given as 1658. Ibid., Sheet A3. Ibid., p. 18. Ibid., p. 36. S.R. Gardiner, Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, 1625-1660 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1889, 1947 3rd edition revised) pp. 316-326. Isaac Penington (Junior) Esq., A Considerable Question about Government Thomason/E.694 [6]. J.C Davis on 'Cromwell's Religion' in David L. Smith (ed.) Cromwell and the Interregnum (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2003) p. 147. Marchmont Nedham, A True State of the case of the commonwealth (London 1653/4; Exeter, The Rota, 1978). Nedham, who had published newspapers in the royalist cause before the King's execution was by this stage editor of the regime's official journal and the Government's chief spin doctor' British Library mss Add.637888 ff. 128-129. Friends House Library, London: J. Penington mss collection, mss Vo1.2.254 i 38. 39. PENINGTON AND POLITICS 39 ADDITIONAL BIBLIOGRAPHY PRIMARY AND EARLY SoURCES: City of London archives, biographical notes concerning Isaac Penington (senior). Issued on behalf of Alderman Isaac Penington as Lord Mayor: Warrant to Trained Bands, 23 September 1642, Thomason/E.ll8 [29]. Broadside, 12 November 1642 mustering regiments Wing/L2878A. Sales on Lord's Day, Thomason/ 17 E 99 [27]. Committee of Sequestrations, Cambden House, Thomason 669 f.7 [40]. Six Regiments to advance towards Reading, Thomason 669 f.7 [45]. AsMP: Journal of the House of Commons and Journal of the House of Lords accessed through British History on-line at www. british-history.ac. uk. Anon. Hosanna: or A Song of Thanksgiving sung by the Children of Zion and set forth in three notable Speeches at Grocers-Hall on the late solemn Day ofThanksgiving, Thursday June 71649. Thomason/ E.559 [11]. Arize Evans, Mr. Evans' and Mr. Peningtons Prophosie Thomason/E. 823 [6]. John Goodwin, The Obstructours of Justice (London, 1649) Thomason/E. 557[2]. Peter Heylyn , A Brief Relation of the Death and Sufferings of Archbishop Laud Wing / H1685. Marchmorit Nedham, The Excellencie of a Free State (London, 1656) Thomason/209.E /676 [1]. Robert Norwood, A Pathway unto England's Perfect Settlement (London, 1653) Thomason/E.702 [16]. Robert Norwood, An Additional Discource (1653), Thomason/E 708 [9]. John Penington (ed.) Letters of Isaac Penington. Friends House Library, London MS Vols. 341-343. Sir John Spelman, The Case of Our Affaires undated Wing 54935. W.5., A True Declaration and Just Commendation, Thomason/ 17E.99 [27] 40 PENINGTON AND POLITICS RE-PRINTED PRIMARY SOURCES: John Barclay (ed.). Letters of Isaac Penington (London: John and Arthur Arch, 1828). Licia Kuenning (ed.) The Works of Isaac Penington, a Minister of the Gospel in the Society of Friends including his Collected Letters, 4 volumes (Glenside, PA: Quaker Heritage Press, 1995-1997). Hugh Barbour and Arthur Roberts (eds.), Early Quaker Writings: 1650-1700 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1973). Calendar of State Papers Vol. 1649-50 (London: Longmans, 1875) DA 25.4 (44) Vol. 1649/50 (London: Longmans, 1875); Vol. 1651 (London: Longmans, 1877) Vol. 1651/52 (London: Longmans, 1877); Vol. 1652/53 (London: Longmans, 1875); Vol. 1655 (London: Longmans, 1881). Edward and Peter Razzell (eds.) The English Civil War: A Contemporary Account, Vol. 4 1648-1656 (Hampstead: Caliban Books, 1996). SECONDARY SOURCES: G.E. Aylmer, Rebellion or Revolution: England from Civil War to Restoration (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). Stephen Baskerville, Not Peace but a Sword: The Political Theology of the English Revolution (London: Routledge, 1993). Jeremy Boulton, Neighbourhood and Society: A London Suburb in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). J.e. Davis, Oliver Cromwell (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2001). John Forster. Arrest of the Five Members by Charles the First: A Chapter of English History Rewritten. (London, John Murray, 1860). S.R. Gardiner, History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, 16491660 (London: Longmans, Green and Co, 1894; Addlestrop: Windrush Press, 1988). Douglas Gwyn, Seekers Found: Atonement in Early Quaker Experience (Wallingford PA: Pendle Hill Publications, 2000). Keith Lindley, Popular Politics and Religion in Civil War London (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1997). Jason Peacey, Politicians and Pamphleteers: Propaganda During the English Civil Wars and Interregnum (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004). PENINGTON AND POLITICS 41 Stephen Porter (ed.) London and the Civil War (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996). Margaret Spufford (ed.) The World of Rural Dissenters, 1520-1725 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Murray Tolmie, The Triumph of the Saints: The Separate Churches of London 1616 - 1649 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977). Richard T.Vann,The Social Development of English Quakerism 16551755 (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1969). Alexandra Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). Maria Webb, The Penns and Peningtons of the 17ti' century in their domestic and religious life (London: F. B. Kitto, 1867). Austin Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982). Blair Worden, The Rump Parliament, 1648-1653 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974). George Yule, Puritans in Politics: The Religious Legislation of the Long Parliament, 1640-1647 (Oxford: Sutton Courtenay Press, 1976). Perez Zagorin, A History of Political Thought in the English Revolution, reprint (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1997). ARTICLES Alan Cole, 'The Quakers and the English Revolution' in Past and Present, No 10, Nov. 1956 pp. 39-54. Sarah Gibbard Cook, 'The Congregational independents and the Cromwellian constitutions' in Church History XLVI (1977) pp. 335-357. J.e. Davis, 'Living with the living God: Radical Religion and the English Revolution' in Christopher Durston and Judith Maltby (eds.), Religion in the English Revolution (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007). Sean Kelsey, 'Constructing the Council of State' in Parliamentary History Vol. 22 pt 3 (2003). David A. Kirby, 'The Radicals of St. Stephen's Coleman Street, London, 1624-1642' in Guildhall Miscellany Vol.III (1970). Barbara Taft, 'That Lusty Puss, The Good Old Cause' in History of Political Thought, Vol. V, No.3. Winter 1984, pp. 447-468. 42 PENINGTON AND POLITICS WEB-SITES: Access to Archives: www.a2a.org.uk British History On-line: www.british-history.ac.uk British Library: www.bl.uk Early English Books On-Line: http:/ / eebo.chadwyckcom Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: www.oxforddnb.com Quaker Heritage Press: www.qhpress.org 43 THE BUILDING OF SETTLE MEETING HOUSE IN 1678 Settle Friends Meeting House, in Kirkgate, Settle, North Yorkshire, has been in continuous use by Quakers since its building in 1678. David Butler, in The Quaker Meeting Houses of Britain, records that a parcel of ground in what was then known as Howson's Croft was first acquired by Quakers in 1659, and was confirmed in 1661 as having' a meeting house and stable erected thereon'.1 The indenture itself, dated 4 September 1661, is not in fact quite so specific, referring only to the land having 'houses and other grounds', but it makes very clear that the intention in 1659 was (and remained) to provide a burial place and 'a free meeting place for freinds to meet in'.2 The parcel of ground, 18 x 27 yards in extent, had been purchased from William Holgate on 2 March 1659 by John Kidd, John Robinson, Christopher Armetstead, John Kidd Uunior], and Thomas Cooke, 'tradesmen'. The deed of 1661 formally assigned the property (for a peppercorn rent) to two other Quakers, Samuel Watson of Stainforth Hall, gentleman, and John Moore of Eldroth, yeoman, 'in the behalfe of themselves and all other freinds belonging to Settle meeting'. That is to say, Watson and Moore became the first trus~ of the property. Settle Preparative Meeting minutes do not survive before 1700, and so it is not possible to say whether Settle Friends used the existing buildings on the site for their meetings. That they continued to meet in each other's houses is clear from Settle Monthly Meeting Sufferings, which record a number of fines for holding meetings in the years 1670-72 (following the Second Conventicle Act of 1670), Samuel Watson being hit particularly hard. 3 However, the question of a purpose-built meeting house is raised soon afterwards: a Monthly Meeting minute dated 5th of 12th month 1672 (i.e. February 1673) decides that enquiry should be made of every particular Meeting 'what they are willing to doe towards the charge of building a meetting house for the seruice of the truth'.4 But the response to this minute was presumably poor (or local circumstances may have changed again), because no follow-up is recorded, even though the particular meetings were asked to report back by the next Monthly Meeting. For unknown reasons, despite there being markedly less persecution during the mid- and later 1670s,5 Monthly Meeting 44 SETTLE MEETING HOUSE did not return to the subject until 1678, when matters move on decisively. There is first a minute (5th of 4th month, i.e. June) that repeats, in noticeably stronger terms, the request of 1672:6 [... ] that freinds of each particaller meetting doe bring an acount to the next monthly meetting what they can freely contribute to the charge of the meetting house Intended to be built at Settle for the seruice of truth. A longer minute the following month (3 rd of 5th month, i.e. July) then makes it clear that the building project is already under way: agreements with workmen are in place, co stings have been obtained, and the contributions now required to be made by the particular meetings are to ensure that the work gets finished: It is this day agreed & concluded vpon that the meeteing house att Settle which is agreed with worke men to be builded and the charg of it is supposed to be 80li att least and Settell meeteing haueing concluded to collect & pay 50li or vpward towards the said charge which falles short at least 30li it is therefor seene meete & convenient that the rest of the meeteings belonging this monthly meeteing doe make a free & voluntary contribution or collection in each perticuler meeteing in order to the finishing the said work & the cole[c]tions soe mad to be brought in the next monthly meeteing to be in readynesse to be disposed of as aboue said. In summary, the work is expected to cost at least £80, of which Settle Meeting will contribute £50 or more, and the other meetings, it is hoped, at least £30. Finally, on the 7th of 6th month (Le. August 1678), the sums of money actually received from the other particular meetings are recorded: from Bentham, £7 12s.; from Bolland (Le. Newtonin-Bowland), £5 towards what was eventually £7; from Rulston (Le. Rylstone), £3 13s 6d; from Scarrhouse and Hauksweek (i.e. Scar House and Hawkswick), £2 18s 8d; and from Salterforth, 15s - a total of £21 19s 2d. Settle Meeting House today has the date 1678 above the door, which would appear to confirm that the building work was completed as planned. It appears to be the earliest purpose-built Quaker meeting house in Yorkshire? A document has now come to light that broadly confirms the income received from the different meetings and sets out in detail the various items of expenditure, naming many of the people 45 SETTLE MEETING HOUSE involved with the work. It is undated, but clearly relates to the 1678 building. To a note on the reverse in a later hand, reading 'Notes of contributions & disbursments about Setle Meeting house', another hand has added 'When built'.s The document is currently in the possession of Elizabeth Griffiths, an American descendant of one of the prominent early Quaker families in the Settle area, the Tathams, but Mrs Griffiths wishes to donate it to Leeds University Library, and arrangements have been made for it to join the collections there in Autumn 2016. 9 Specifically, Elizabeth Griffiths is descended from Marmaduke and Frances Tatham (d. 1691 and 1677), members of Bentham Preparative Meeting (and hence of Settle Monthly Meeting) but resident in Tatham, Lancashire. The descent comes down through their son John (1658-1701) and his wife Elizabeth Skirrow of Wray, Lancashire (1666-1730?), who moved to live in Over (i.e. High) Bentham, eight miles from Settle; and then by way of John's son James (1695-1772) and his wife Martha Whalley (d. 1737), also of Over Bentham.10 James Tatham's name is prominent in Settle Monthly Meeting minutes of the first half of the eighteenth century, when he was evidently a leading Friend. It would seem that local documents of different kinds were entrusted to him in this period or later, and that they remained in his family over the centuries. As will be seen, however, members of this Tatham family appear to have played no part in the building of Settle Meeting House, and it may be that they had little connection with the town in the 1670s.11 The new document reads as follows: The seuerall contribucions of fri[n]ds to the charge of the meetting house at Settle as followeth. Settle Meetting Bentham Meetting Bolland Meetting Rullston Meetting Scar House Meetting Sallterforth Meetting The tottall sum li s d 51 15 0 7 12 0 7 3 2 10 13 0 6 o 18 15 0 0 73 13 6 46 SETTLE MEETING HOUSE Disburssed12 li s d To the workemen at two payments in Michaell Prestons 36 0 0 Payd to Lawrence Tateham for feeter 3 0 0 Charges at the setting up the timber of the meetting house 0 10 6 Expences on the workmen at three tymes 0 3 0 The last payment in Michaell Prestons 13 10 0 The same day spent on the workmen 0 0 9 One bad halfe crown exchanged 0 2 6 One window to Lawrence Tateham 0 4 0 To John Robinson which he had laid out for lyme & boards leading 1 0 0 For windows glassening 1 3 0 To John Kidd which he had payd for casements o 18 0 For boards at Lancaster 3 0 0 For boards at Scipton 2 16 8 Expences on the joyners at twice 0 1 6 Spent on John Robinson the carpinter 0 0 4 To John Bradley for works 0 18 0 Henery Buck for works 2 10 0 To William Hall for works 0 8 0 Giuen to Lawrence Tateham man 0 0 6 To the smith at Wharfe for work 0 5 9 To Thomas Kidd for spikins & other things 0 5 11 li s d tottall 66 18 5 The remaynder of Samuell Wattson & his daughters} contribucion which he disburssed himselfe} George Atkinson for leading slayte Christopher Armittsted vnpayd Martin Lambert vnpayd Thomas Robinson Junior vnpaid The tottall sum is 0 0 1 10 1 0 o 10 0 0 0 0 5 5 s 3 5 4 ~ 7 li 74 5 d As regards income, these accounts show that Settle Meeting itself contributed just over £50, and that slightly more than at first reported was forthcoming in the end from Bolland and Scar House. The several contributions in fact add up to £74 3s 6d, a penny more than the final declared expenditure, and so the meeting house did not turn out to cost '80li att least'. David Butler erroneously gives the cost as £50, the low figure 'suggesting a SETTLE MEETING HOUSE 47 good deal of self-help as was usual',13 but even at c. £75 the cost was considerably less than that of most of the other early meeting houses whose accounts Butler very helpfully prints in his Appendix (the earliest Yorkshire example being Huddersfield, 1770, £162). As Butler says, 'Care is needed in using these figures, as Friends often provided some of the work or materials, or led [carted] them'.14 In the case of Settle, Butler supposes that the existing building was demolished to make way for the new meeting house, and, because of the cheapness, suggests 'the presence on site of a large supply of materials: stone certainly, possibly also roofing flags and roof timbers from the previous building. Perhaps the foundations too were re-used, which could account for the building having a north aspect' .15 Stone, in particular, is not mentioned in the newly discovered accounts, bearing out this theory, and timber and slate, also, are mentioned only as having been 'set up' and 'led', respectively, not purchased. Indeed the only listed materials that would seem definitely unconnected to labour costs are the boards bought at Lancaster and Skipton, the casements, the 'spikins' (spike-nails)/6 and possibly the lime, unless that was also merely 'led'. As can clearly be seen, a very high proportion of the expenditure was on direct charges for labour, paid in particular to Michael Preston, who was evidently the main contractor. The two items relating to Lawrence Tatham, probably also a contractor in having a man of his own, may be partly for the labour of installing 'feeter' and a window, and partly for the materials concerned. The word' feeter', apparently a plural, is unrecorded, but is likely to be related to' footing' in the sense of' A projecting course or courses at the base or foundation of a wall or other erection to give it security' Y The accounts printed by Butler that are closest in date to Settle, and also closest in cost, are for Cartmel Height Meeting House in Lancashire, which cost £106 in 1677. 18 Here too there are entries where the costs of labour and materials are clearly combined (e.g. 'slates and dressing of them', £7 7s 7d), but others that appear to be for supplies alone (including wood, stone, glass, and casements) total almost £45 whereas 'mens wages', the final item, are given as no more than £2514s 3d. This distribution of costs would seem to support Butler's deduction that comparatively few building supplies had to be purchased 48 SETTLE MEETING HOUSE at Settle, substantially reducing the expenditure, despite the relatively high sums paid to Michael Preston for his workmen. The Settle accounts are particularly interesting in demonstrating the extent of what Butler refers to as 'self-help' by the Settle Quakers. A high proportion of the names mentioned can be identified as local Friends, including Michael Preston himself, Henry Buck, and probably also John Bradley and William Hall out of those who are being paid for 'works'.19 Others in the list, seemingly not involved in construction, are clearly being reimbursed for money laid out on particular things, three of those in question being the leading Quakers John Robinson, John Kidd, and George Atkinson. Robinson and Kidd were among the five who originally purchased the land in 1659, as above. 20 The John Kidd named in the accounts could be either the elder or the younger; the elder is likely to be the man of this name recorded as giving shelter to the early Quaker preacher John Camm when he visited Settle in c. 1653. 21 There is then a third category, represented by four names in the supplementary list of disbursements, who are being paid money apparently due to them in an unspecified way: on the one hand Christopher Armittsted (another of the original purchasers), Martin Lambert, and Thomas Robinson Junior, who are all said to be 'vnpayd,/2 and the special case of 'Samuell Wattson & his daughters'. It looks, from the wording, as if Watson, one of the most prominent Settle Friends (and of gentry status),23 is being reimbursed for a portion of a larger contribution to the costs of the new meeting house (very likely part of Settle Meeting's overall £51 15s), 'which he disburssed himselfe'. Given that the additional £7 5s 5d expenditure itemised in the supplementary list brings the overall expenditure to within 1d of the total income for the project, and that the items in question were not originally accounted for as expenditure, the probable explanation is that the accounts are now deliberately being balanced, to show that all the income was spent.24 That is to say, it may be that the five named payees in the supplementary list had not, as it were, originally submitted claims for payment, perhaps regarding that as unnecessary, but that the decision has now been made, after the completion of the work, that the unspent part of the overall income should be distributed to them in recognition of their financial contribution. SETTLE MEETING HOUSE 49 The reference to Samuel Watson's contribution being partly from his daughter or daughters is particularly striking. Given that an actual financial contribution seems meant, the reference is very likely to his step-daughters Elizabeth and Mary, daughters of Mary Monke, the widow of a Quaker from Nottingham, whom he married in 1664; in 1678 his daughters Grace, Mercy, and Peace would have been ten, eight, and less than a year. 25 It is clear at least that Samuel Watson, perhaps conscious of his status, wanted his contribution to be regarded as a family affair. As noted above, in 1661 he had become one of the two trustees of the plot of land in question, and, for whatever reason, his fellow trustee John Moore is not named in the accounts, although he appears to have lived on until 1690. It is highly probable, in the circumstances, that Samuel Watson took the leading part in getting Settle Meeting House built, judging the time to be propitious. Persecution for holding meetings did return to Settle in the early 1680s, as elsewhere, notably in May 1683: while Friends were 'peaceably mett together in their publick meeting place', informers came in, who subsequently reported the matter to the local justice, Henry Marsden of Gisburn. Fines and distraint of goods were imposed, the main Sufferers being Samuel Watson, John Moore, and John Robinson, along with Richard Armitstead. 26 By this time, however, the meeting house was well established, and unlike in some other places in the country it appears to have been left untouched. Oliver Pickering 50 SETTLE MEETING HOUSE ENDNOTES David M. Butler, The Quaker Meeting Houses of Britain (London: Friends Historical Society, 1999), p. 828, quoting from an unspecified Yorkshire Quarterly Meeting document. His wording is very close to that found in the 1854 'Statement of the Trust Properties within York Quarterly Meeting [... ] as Furnished to the Charity Commissioners', Leeds University Library [LUL], Clifford Street Archive, III 5.1, p. 887. 2. LUL, Carlton Hill Archive, U 3/1. 3. See Settle Monthly Meeting [MM], Record of Sufferings 165493, LUL, Carlton Hill Archive, D 9, pp. 15-18, and Joseph Besse, A Collection of the Sufferings of the People Called Quakers, 2 vols (London, L. Hinde, 1753), II, pp. 130-32. For detailed examples, see Jean Asher, 'Samuel Watson (c. 1618-1708) of Knight Stainforth Hall, Quaker', North Craven Heritage Trust Journal, 2009, pp. 22-26. 4. Settle MM minute book, 1666-1700, LUL, Carlton Hill Archive, H 1, p. 27. In quoting from documents I have reproduced manuscript spelling but capitalized according to modem practice. 5. The Settle MM Sufferings book records no fines 'for meeting together' between 1672 and 1682. Penalties imposed on Settle Friends for non-payment of tithes, unrecorded since 1659, reappear from 1679. 6. Settle MM Minute book, 1666-1700., p. 56, as for all three of the minutes quoted here. 7. W. Pearson Thistlethwaite, Yorkshire Quarterly Meeting (of the Society of Friends), 1665-1966 (Harrogate: The Author, 1979), p. 93. However, Brigflatts Meeting House, built in 1675, and now in Cumbria, was formerly within the West Riding. 8. On another fold of the reverse is 'Accounts of building the meeting house', written probably by the second of these hands. 9. The donation will also include signed papers of denial and acknowledgement (i.e. declarations of disownment and contrition) dating from 1716 to 1729, all relating to Settle MM. I wish to thank Elizabeth Griffiths for her kind cooperation during the preparation of this article. 10. James Tatham's date of death appears to be unrecorded in 1. SETTLE MEETING HOUSE 51 the Quaker burial registers, but it is given as 1772 in Richard E. Tatham, A Genealogical Chart of the Family of Tatham in the County Palatine of Lancaster from about the Year 1580 to the Present Time (Settle: [s.n.], 1857). 11. James Tatham's name also appears frequently in the papers of denial and acknowledgement referred to in n. 9. His younger son Joseph Tatham (1732-86) established the wellknown Quaker school in Leeds. 12. For the terms 'feeter', 'leading', and 'spikins', see further below. 'Glassening', glazing, is not recorded in the OED. 'Wharfe' is a small village near Austwick, North Yorkshire, five miles from Settle. 13. Butler, Quaker Meeting Houses, p. 829, referring to a short entry in The Friend for 21 July 1978 (p. 886), where the anonymous writer, evidently drawing on the Settle minutes for July 1678, states that the meeting house' cost about £80, of which £50 was raised in the meeting'. Butler's page reference to this item ('302-3') is mistaken. 14. Ibid., p. 914 (for the accounts he prints, see pp. 915-20). For 'lead' in this sense, see OED, s.v. lead v.l, 1.1.b, 'To carry or convey, usually in a cart or other vehicle'. 15. Ibid., p. 829. 16. OED, s.v. spiking n.l. 17. OED, s.v. footing n., 12. The Dictionary of the Scots Language records an 1821 usage of 'feeting' to mean 'footing' or 'foothold' . 18. Butler; Quaker Meeting Houses, pp. 915-16, drawing on Isabel Ross, 'The Cartmel"Book for Pious Uses"', Friends Quarterly, 8 (1954), 245-56 (p. 248). 19. A Michael Preston appears in a 1660 list of 229 West Riding Sufferers, and is listed again in 1683 (Besse, A Collection of the Sufferings, II, pp. 102, 152). He occurs in the Quaker birth registers as father of a child born in Settle MM in 1666, and in the Settle MM minute book in 1671. He may be the Michael Preston whose death is recorded in 1713. A Henry Buck is minuted from 1679 to 1686, and is censured in 1684 for having been married by a priest; he may be the man of this name who died in Knaresborough MM in 1717. The names of John Bradley and William Hall appear once each in the minutes, in 1680 and 1700. Lawrence Tatham is absent from 52 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. SETTLE MEETING HOUSE the records, and would therefore seem not to be a Quaker, despite the Tatham name. The names of John Robinson and John Kidd feature many times in the Settle MM minutes, and they, along with George Atkinson, are regular Sufferers (Besse, A Collection of the Sufferings, and LUL, Carlton Hill Archive, D 9).The Quaker burial registers record Robinson's death in 1699 and Atkinson's in 1703. It is unclear when the elder John Kidd died - MM minutes continue to refer to a John Kidd senior up to and beyond 1700 - but it appears from the registers that John Kidd junior died in 1705. The birth of a Thomas Kidd in Settle MM (son of John) is recorded in 1654. 'John Robinson the carpinter', listed separately in the accounts, is presumably different from the Quaker John Robinson. The First Publishers of Truth: being early records (now first printed) of the introduction of Quakerism into the counties of England and Wales, by ed. Norman Penney (London: Headley Brothers, 1907), p. 303. Christopher Armitstead (the usual spelling) appears in the Quaker registers as the father of children in Settle MM, 166475; he may be the man of this name who dies in 1718. Thomas Robinson Junior is likely to be the Thomas Robinson born in Settle MM in 1657, son of John, and who died there in 1716. The name of Martin Lambert appears not to occur in Quaker records. For a detailed account of Watson's life, see Asher, 'Samuel Watson'. Cf. Butler's comments on the earliest building accounts (for Hertford Meeting House, 1670) printed in his Quaker Meeting Houses, p. 915: 'Two accounts for this work appear in the minute books, neither dated, the earlier one amounting to £155, the later to £243 and corresponding with the sum of money received for the work. The later account is assumed to give the full cost of the work making allowance for the value of contributions in kind'. The Hertford accounts are also similar to Settle's (and different from most of the others printed by Butler) in naming people who were involved. Asher, 'Samuel Watson', p. 25. LUL, Carlton Hill Archive, D 9, p. 32. 53 'MISORCUS' AND RICHARD RICHARDSON In this article I would like to explore a pair of doctrinal dispute texts published in 1676 and 1677. They concern an anonymous writer, 'Misorcus', who was vehemently opposed to the Quaker theological position at that time and Richard Richardson, a London Quaker and the movement's second recording clerk, succeeding Ellis Hookes in 1681. Richardson, according to the entry by Skidmore in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, was a schoolmaster firstly in Essex and then London. 1 He became clerk to several other meetings and committees and also took to publishing several controversial books and pamphlets, as indeed did many other Quakers at this time. He was very much at the centre of Friends' administrative activities in London and was at the heart of the embryo library of published material which later became the national repository now housed in Friends' House, London. My interest in the two texts was sparked by an investigation I carried out into the different writing styles comparing some seventeenth-century establishment writers and early Friends. I am interested in the manner in which Quakers and their opponents conducted doctrinal disputes in the latter part of the seventeenth century. What were their approaches? How might their language use differ? These two pamphlets serve well as examples of the genre. First, let's consider the 'anti-Quaker' writer. The name itself is a mystery and any underlying meaning must be speculative. It is not recognised by the OED as a meaningful word. Misorcus styles himself an 'anti-Quaker' in his response 2 to an earlier Quaker publication A Treatise of Oaths 3, that he describes as a 'tedious pamphlet'. This publication is signed by twelve Friends, including William Penn, George Whitehead and Stephen Crisp. We do not actually know who this person was but he strongly objected to the Quaker position on swearing oaths of allegiance. He insists the Quakers hold (1) [... ] vain, false and anti-scriptural opinions, which they cannot maintain either by God's holy Word, or any rational Arguments, as I shall [... ] prove: The text is a treatise addressed to 'Lords and Commons' (Le. 54 'MISORCUS' AND RICHARD RICHARDSON Parliament) following the Quakers' request to be free from the obligation of swearing oaths of allegiance and to be permitted to worship after the manner of Friends. He attempts to show up their 'anti-scriptural opinions' which he finds 'absurd, false and frivolous', finding the scriptural and other references provided by Quakers to be 'of no validity'. He uses classic disputing techniques of logical reasoning supported by many quotations in Latin. Half-way through he admits he ought to finish there but instead brings in references to St. Jerome (AD 422) as support for the proper existence of the oath of allegiance. Richardson, responding a few months later on behalf of the 1675 Quaker group who signed the original Treatise of Oaths as well on behalf of Friends generally, uses the technique that Friends had perfected of not addressing directly the accusations made but instead objecting to the personalisation of the dispute by Misorcus, in an assurance that they themselves have no intention of making personal comments about the writer. Richardson expresses dismay that Misorcus has done that to them as well as hiding behind anonymity. Other Quaker objections include Misorcus's partial selection of quotations from the Quakers' earlier writings and the patronising use of the terms 'illiterate' or '(un)learned'. These phrases are repeated five times by Richardson in which he demonstrates his own knowledge of Latin by pointing out several language errors made by Misorcus himself. Misorcus's text is almost 16,000 words long and he uses a good deal of this word count to build his argument in favour of swearing oaths of allegiance. Richardson is in the end goaded into responding, though much less longwindedly (under 2500 words). This is not the place to set out the structure of either man's argument in full. However, one point addressed by Richardson is to dispute the use of the quotations from the Douay-Rheims Catholic Bible (which would not have been in favour in the 1670s) and from various bishops, insisting that these authors are not themselves in favour of swearing (d. Matthew's gospel). Richardson uses a familiar approach in which Friends often try to deal with conflict by emphasising that there is no fundamental disagreement between them. He simply explains that both Quakers and non-Quakers surely believe in the value of truth-telling; it is merely that the Quakers object to the outward 'MISORCUS' AND RICHARD RICHARDSON 55 ceremony of swearing. I now move from the larger picture to a brief comparison of language use by the two protagonists. Misorcus uses a traditional, formal register, probably more for show than for trying to put his argument across. (He may be more concerned with gaining advantage by writing an unsolicited treatise to Parliament than with converting Quakers to his point of view.) For instance, he begins by addressing the Lords and Commons, examples (2) and (3) below: (2) With respect to the former part of it [the Treatise] I have (as many of my Brethren in the Ministry have learnedly done before me) imployed my weak endeavours for the satisfaction of their scrupulous Consciences, referring the execution of the latter part of it, for severe [Note: Corrigi eos cupimus non necari, nee Disciplinam circa eos negligi. Aug. Ep. 127.] Discipline, to your Honours great Authority, and most Sage Counsels; for a blessing on which, to the advancement of Gods glory, the good of the Church, the safety, honour and wellfare of our Soveraign and his Kingdoms, with the publick you have the daily private Prayers and Supplications of him who conceales his Name, not out of a guilty Fear, but a cautious Prudence, not willing to have it aspers'd with reproaches and unjust calumnies, with bitter railings and Invectives [... ] And towards the end of his text he says: (3) To that exquisite gloss of Mercerus, I cannot omit to subjoyn another of the great Scripturist Deodatus (once Professor of Geneva) upon the forecited Text of Ecclesiastes, which in my opinion comes home to an obstinate Quaker, or any other Dissenter, his numerical words are these[ ... ] Richardson's style, while characterized by less florid language does lead to ambiguity in places, particularly in terms of syntax and cohesion, see his use of the 3rd person pronoun in example (4) below. We have to deduce who is 'he' and who is 'they'. His intention is probably to create a stance-related gap, lending authorial distance in referencing Misorcus as 'he' and the Quakers as ' they', and at the same time aligning himself as a neutral writer with his readers. 56 'MISORCUS' AND RICHARD RICHARDSON (4) A Strange Forreign Name, come from Rome or Constantinople, as the illiterate Quaker may think (he for whom he pretends to have taken such Pains) who being better acquainted with Scripture-Language, and seeing his whole Endeavours through his Book employed in Opposing the Command of Christ, and adjuring men to break it by Swearing, thinks it might have been far more truly, properly & pertinently Antichrist's exorcist, as one likely to have such an Office in that Synagogue, as the highest Preferment he has been capable to attain. And the rather because after the innate Principle thereof he takes upon him immediately after the mention of his weak Endeavours in Doctrine, to adjure the Magistrate to severe Discipline, only short of killing the Quakers; they that delivered the Martyrs to be burned, used as mild Expressions. Misorcus's style of address shifts between 3rd person 'he' and 2nd person' thou' in speaking directly to Richardson. Each is disagreeing with the other: Misorcus uses learned references and Latin quotations in his elegant, complex sentences as illustrated in example (5): (5) The Father's Gloss is this, which for the benefit of an illiterate Quaker, I shall translate word for word into English; [Note: Hanc per elementa jurandi pessimam consuetudin em semper habuere Iuda?i, &c.] Richardson, though not as unlearned as Misorcus would like to imagine, piles up his clauses together and eschews the obsequious phrases found in his opponent's text (see example (4». Both writers are evenly matched but where Misorcus's text reads like an unremarkable, if pretty impolite, seventeenthcentury educated figure, Richardson's style has many of the characteristics of the distinctive approach developed by Friends at that time. 4 This method of exploiting a polemic as exemplified by my pair of texts is representative of a substantial collection of pamphlets and books published by Friends towards the latter part of the century in order to convince the general readership of their doctrinal position and to refute accusations by their opponents. Kate Peters5 maintains that the disputes were in many cases 'MISORCUS' AND RICHARD RICHARDSON 57 encouraged by the Quakers: new pamphlet titles were published and distributed in a locality and Quaker preaching at public meetings made use of these texts; this engendered disputes and arguments with the local establishment of magistrates and ministers. Quakers would then publish an account of such a confrontation and follow that up with any trial proceedings or other developments. Peters says the writing: 'could move from the general to the specific in what appears to be a calculated process'. This short article is designed to provide a snapshot of the possibilities available to any readers or researchers interested in tracking related sets of pamphlets and tracts in connection with early Quaker writers and their published adversaries. The field is open for a variety of related disciplines as well as for general readers wanting to know some of the less well-known byways in this period of Quakerism. The; adverse' collection of texts held in the Library of the Religious Society of Friends in London is a rich source of information, in particular where one is able to match up anti-Quaker dispute texts into their historical sequence with those published by Friends. The holdings deserve to be better known. It would be good to know who Misorcus was, too! Judith Roads 58 'MISORCUS' AND RICHARD RICHARDSON ENDNOTES 1. Gil Skidmore, 'Richard Richardson' (2015), in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Available at http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article I 69118 2. Misorcus. The anti-Quaker, or, A compendious answer to a tedious pamphlet entituled, A treatise of oaths subscribed by a jury of 12 Quakers, whose names are prefixed to it. 1676 (Wing. A3506). 3. Richard Richardson. A treatise of oaths containing several weighty reasons why the people call'd Qvakers refuse to swear : and those confirmed by numerous testimonies out of Gentiles, Jews and Christians, both fathers, doctors and martyrs: presented to the King and great council of England, assembled in Parliament.1675. (Wing.R1399) 4. Judith Roads, 'Early Quaker broadsides corpus: a case study'. In Quaker Studies, 17(1), (2012),27-47. 5. Kate Peters, 1995. 'Patterns of Quaker Authorship'. In Corns, T. and Loewenstein, D (eds.) The Emergence of Quaker writing: Dissenting Literature in Seventeenth-century England. London: Frank Cass, 1995. p. 6-24. 59 RECENT PUBLICATIONS 2015 London Quakers in the Trans-Atlantic World: the Creation of an Early Modern Community. By Jordan Landes. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. viii + 252pp., hardback. £60. ISBN 978-1137366-68-9. A panoramic view of the City of London and Stepney by William Morgan in 1682 is provided on the front cover of this important new work by Jordan Landes in the Pal grave Macmillan Christianities in the Trans-Atlantic World series. It depicts the city landscape, the merchant vessels on the River Thames, but it is so grey and dismal looking that you are all but put off from venturing inside the book itself. And yet this is a study that is full of colour, offers wonderfully vivid insights into the creation of Quaker networks, and how ideas were shaped and disseminated. It is certainly well-crafted as it is both studious yet accessible to all readers. Moreover, it offers a rich analysis of trans-Atlantic mercantilism and the maintenance of the complex networks that led people to traverse the Atlantic 'to carry ideas, to colonise, and to provide labour'. Chapter 6 on the push and pull factors which underpinned migration to America certainly captures the imagination as Landes explains the levels of assistance (where provided), the journey itself, the settlements established and the land companies that enabled the colonising process, and the experiences of the settlers. Working with the earlier assessments of Richard T. Vann and others, she also reviews the impact of migration on British and Irish Quaker communities. In this tightly packed and fully referenced work, Landes pinpoints London as an early-modern international centre of commerce, and notes the social, cultural and political dynamism of the growing metropolis. She pays appropriate attention to the burgeoning book trade of the early modern period, the endeavour of missionary Friends in the Atlantic world, and the copious correspondence flowing from London. Landes discusses the challenges they faced and the administrative procedures they adopted, notably in the various London-centred business meetings (London Yearly Meeting (LYM), Morning Meeting, Six Weeks Meeting, Meeting for Sufferings and Box Meeting) and how a code of discipline became an essential part of Quaker practice. Given the enormous distances involved this naturally 60 RECENT PUBLICATIONS 2015 took considerable effort, especially as there were periods of intense persecution as well as serious internal divisions and ultimately schism. The personal and professional networks of leading London Friends (male and female) certainly helped their co-religionists to overcome some of these difficulties, while the LYM assisted in the consolidation of the Quaker international community by providing guidance. Indeed, as she points out, the colonial meetings' felt supported and were informed of beliefs in the presence of Quakers in other colonies and in Europe'. So, what can you expect apart from all the above? Well, how about a few additional details to whet your appetite. Landes provides examples of intense Quaker lobbying in London, the American colonies and in the Caribbean; specific commercial activities and credit networks, including trade between Native Americans and Pennsylvanian Quakers; slavery; spectacular money-making ventures, but also reputational risk (and even imprisonment) when business deals were badly handled. She also studies how these networks changed the perception of Quakers in the transatlantic world as well as altering Quaker assessments of the process of colonisation and the impact of the coloniser in America and the Caribbean over several decades. The final remarks are well-judged as she brings the book to a fitting conclusion. Overall, Landes has significantly debated the importance of London Quakers not simply as merchants plying their trade and creating economic networks, but rather as an important cog in the creation of a vibrant international community. As such, this book deserves to be read by all who are interested in how Quakers, despite their relative strength, were able to hold together a disparate religious community in the Atlantic world. Richard C. Allen University of South Wales The Journal of Elias Hicks. Edited by Paul Buckley. San Francisco: Inner Light Books, 2009. xxiv+509pp. ISBN 978-0-979711-04-6 [hardback] £24; ISBN 978-0-979711-05-3 [paperback] £24. Dear Friend: Letters and Essays of Elias Hicks. Edited by Paul Buckley. San Francisco: Inner Light Books, 2011. xx+296pp. ISBN 978-0983498-00-1 [hardback] £28; ISBN 978-0-983498-01-8 [paperback] £15. The Essential Elias Hicks. By Paul Buckley. San Francisco: RECENT PUBLICATIONS 2015 61 Inner Light Books, 2013. xxv+132pp. ISBN 978-0-983498-08-7 [hardback} £16: ISBN 978-0-983498-09-4 [paperback] £10. British Friends may remember visiting the Library at Woodbrooke and seeing on the wall of the lobby a large chart illustrating the many strands of American Quakerism and remarking that one of the major strands was labelled 'Hicksite'. This vague recollection of Elias Hicks as possibly the instigator of one of the many schisms that beset Friends in America during the 19th century could well be the sum of our knowledge. Yet Elias Hicks (1748-1830) was one of the most influential, and detested, Quaker Ministers of his time and, although he did not seek the series of splits which sundered American Quakerism in 1827-8, his faithfulness in supporting what he saw as the true inheritance of early Friends rather than bowing to the tide of evangelicalism certainly meant that it was more difficult for Friends of different persuasions to stay together. Hicks's writing and his preaching were not only important in America for, during those years either side of the American Revolution, the Society of Friends was still a truly trans-Atlantic organisation. And indeed it was Hick's preaching which led Isaac Crewdson to writing A beacon to the Society of Friends which in turn led to the Beaconite disputes in London Yearly Meeting of the 1830s and contributed to many British Friends leaving the Society and moving to other Christian churches including notably the Brethren. Paul Buckley has done a great service to Friends by going back to the original manuscripts and producing first, an edition of Hick's Journal free of the amendments imposed by the original editorial committee and second, a selection of his letters and essays which seeks to illuminate his thought and to shed light on his role as a travelling Minister. Finally he has produced what may be most valuable to British Friends - The Essential Elias Hicks - both a brief biography and an analysis of Hicks' theology, particularly in those areas of Christology and of engagement with the World, which were so problematic for his 'Orthodox' opponents. Throughout Buckley is concerned to present Hicks as he would have seen himself, as a faithful Friend struggling to apply Friend's fundamental principles to the issues he encountered. Hick's repeated message to his time, and to ours, is that Friends should need no other that' the Spirit of Truth, or Light Within, as 62 RECENT PUBLICATIONS 2015 our only rule and guide in all things' and that true Christianity is spiritual and inward and therefore in no need of any material assistance, whether it be belief in past events or good works now. He saw himself as standing in the tradition of the early Friends and, perhaps, as Buckley suggests, as a prophet calling his contemporaries back from apostasy to that true way. Two observations are perhaps worth making to British Friends. One is that it is completely wrong to think of Hicks as a protoliberal Friend. Despite the fact that the Yearly Meetings in which the Hicksite tradition was dominant are now almost uniformly liberal in theology, Hicks appears to us as thoroughly Biblebased. Indeed Hicks delighted in reading the Bible, as Friends had from the beginning, and described it as 'profitable for our encouragement, comfort, and instruction [... ] and [... ] rightly understood, as the best of books extant: Of course that 'rightly understood' is the crux of the matter, for Hicks stood in the line of Pennington and Barclay in maintaining that, though scripture is divinely inspired, it is secondary in importance to the Spirit which inspired it. But Hicks was also a product of his time, of the Enlightenment, in that he would have agreed with Hamlet that: [... ] he that made us with such large discourse, Looking before and after, gave us not That capability and godlike reason To fust in us unused. Both recourse to the Inward Teacher and the application of reason were the tools which Hicks had been given to test the right way to interpret the scriptures. And this led him to state with great clarity a number of things which his evangelical opponents did not want to hear, and caused him to be put down as both a deist and a Unitarian, neither of which were strictly true. The second observation is a more uncomfortable one. Among the most important Friends calling on Yearly Meetings to oppose Elias Hicks were a number of British travelling Ministers, most notably Thomas Shillitoe and Anna Braithwaite. We have yet, I believe, to acknowledge how enthusiastically evangelical was London Yearly Meeting throughout much of the nineteenth century. Hicks referred to these Friends in a letter as 'strangers and busybodies' who' spread darkness and death amongst us, and so interrupt our quiet by hard speeches that we have [... ] patiently RECENT PUBLICATIONS 2015 63 to endure[ ... ]' Anna Braithwaite, who did not, as Buckley seems to think, become . a leader among the Beaconites', particularly attracted Hicks' animus by publishing an account of a private conversation with him without seeking his permission and, after attempting to make amends, received from him a letter which can only be described as icily civil. There is much which we can gain by learning more about our Quaker forebears on both sides of the Atlantic. Buckley makes a good case in these books for the importance of Hicks in understanding how Liberal Quakerism came about and in challenging our assumptions about the direction in which we are going. It may be that we can learn from the outcomes of the disputes of the 1820s and 1830s ways in which not to carry on the disputes of our own times? Certainly Hicks, in his unbending manner, made things worse for himself and for those of his party (which he always referred to as 'the Tolerants'). Yet his utter submission to the leadings of the Light Within and his stern adherence to the discipline must have contributed to his effectiveness as a minister and leader. One cannot help admiring a man who, in his ministry, when young, travelled through the areas of New York between the combatants in the Revolutionary War, and, in his eighties, embarked on a religious journey of 2400 miles lasting seven months over scarcely adequate roads in order to bring the Quaker message to those who had not yet received it. Chris Skidmore Amelia Opie: The Quaker Celebrity. By Ann Farrant. Hindringham: JJG Publishing, 2014. 296 pp., hardback. £25. ISBN 978-1-87094865-4. Any biography will be written from a particular point of view and this meticulously researched and excellently illustrated book by Ann Farrant is no exception. This life of Amelia Alderson Opie is firmly grounded in Norwich, the town of her birth and of the society which most influenced her. Born in 1769 Amelia Alderson was the only child of James Alderson, a Unitarian and successful doctor. After her mother died when she was fifteen Amelia took charge of her father's household and he remained the most important person in her life. The society in which she moved was a progressive one, 64 RECENT PUBLICATIONS 2015 promoting good works and good causes such as the abolition of slavery. It was also literary and musical and Amelia found popularity reciting poems and singing ballads of her own composition. Ann Farrant's research into Amelia's Norwich life is detailed and gives a full picture not only of her family and friends but of the wider background. The whole book is also enlivened by quotations from Amelia's extensive correspondence so that her voice and her enthusiasm for new experiences shine through. In 1794 Amelia visited London and widened her acquaintance to include Mary Wollstonecraft and her circle. One of those she met was the portrait painter John Opie and in 1798, after some hesitation about leaving her father, she became his second wife. Opie was not always comfortable with Amelia's love of society but he encouraged her writing. Her novel Father and Daughter appeared in 1801 and was a great success. Although this is not primarily a book about Amelia as an author Ann Farrant does a good job of describing her literary output. Unfortunately, in 1807 John Opie died at the early age of fortysix and Amelia, still a comparatively young woman, returned to Norwich to live with her father. She also renewed her early friendship with the Quaker Gurney family, especially Joseph John Gurney, and eventually began attending Quaker meetings. Just before her father's death in 1825 and with his full approval, she was accepted into membership of the Society of Friends. Although she took her conversion seriously Amelia was in many ways an unconventional Friend, adopting Quaker plain speech and plain dress but never losing her sense of fun and even mischief right up until her death in 1853. Ann Farrant chronicles the Quaker part of Amelia's career as meticulously as all the other aspects of her life but from the outside, much as her contemporary non-Quaker friends, such as Robert Southey, did. This is a rounded portrait of a fascinating woman and of the place and people who influenced her and should be read by anyone wishing to gain a fuller understanding of the period, not only from a literary or religious viewpoint. Gil Skidmore RECENT PUBLICATIONS 2015 65 SHORT NOTICES "He is our cousin, Cousin". By Antony Barlow. York: Quacks Books, 2015. xxvi+284pp., paperback. £15. ISBN 978-1-90444660-6. It is rare today to publish family histories, despite the growth in recent years of wider interest in genealogical matters with the advent of the web and TV programmes such as 'Who do you think you are?'. Yet this what Antony Barlow has done, having inherited the family archives on the death of his mother. He chiefly tells the story of his own family - that of Frederick Ralph Barlow (1910-1980) and Joan Mary Barber (1914-2007) of growing up in Quaker Birmingham, of the influence of The Downs School and Leighton Park, of family holidays, of friends and of the extensive cousinage in which they found themselves - typified by the photograph taken of Dame Elizabeth Cadbury's 90th birthday celebrations in which 140 family members can be identified. This is a profusely illustrated book - nearly every other page is filled with photographs, some of them perhaps not as well reproduced as they might have been. We catch glimpses of the causes and businesses in which the wider family has been involved - in Woodbrooke, the Bourneville Village Trust, the FAU, with Quakers during the first World War, in the antislavery campaign, and the Carr's biscuit company. Antony Barlow has rightly seen to the proper commemoration (in the form of blue plaques) of his grandfather, John Henry Barlow, a notable Yearly Meeting Clerk, and his great-grandfather, Professor John Barlow, veterinary anatomist, and they are also prominent figures in this book. This is not a historian's book but an enthusiast's book, not full of stylish prose or particularly accurate. However throughout it is the voices of the members of the family, including Antony Barlow himself, which make it worth dipping into. Respectable Rebels. By Edward H Milligan. York: Quacks Books, 2015. vi + 102pp., paperback. £8. ISBN 978-1-904446-65-1. This book is a joint biography of William Alexander and his wife Anne (nee Tuke), late-eighteenth/ early-nineteenth century York Friends. Both were descended from families which could 66 RECENT PUBLICATIONS 2015 date their Quaker faith back to the very beginning and both had a more than local reputation amongst Friends. Anne was a recorded minister, William became a stationer and publisher: he and Anne were responsible for the initiation of the series The Annual Monitor, which ran until 1919, becoming, without having any official status, the obituary book of deceased British Friends. When William Alexander sold his business it passed eventually into the hands of William Sessions, becoming eventually Sessions of York So it was that the late William Kaye Sessions persuaded Edward H. Milligan to write this history, to honour the founder of the family firm. On William Sessions' death, Ted Milligan surrendered the manuscript to his children and this book has been published to celebrate the 150th anniversary of William Sessions taking change of the business in 1865. Unfortunately it shows some signs of haste in its preparation, not least in poor proofreading and an unsuitable and out-of-focus cover design. Nevertheless the substance of the text is as interesting and informative as one would expect of a book from this author and, despite the absence of a bibliography, the volume boasts no fewer than nine appendices, occupying nearly half the book! Maidenhead Quakers: three centuries in the life of a small community. By Stanley F. Jones. Maidenhead, 2015. 83pp., paperback £12 [plus £3.50 p&p through al-donaldson@outlookcom]. ISBN 9781-944246-79-2. This well-illustrated meeting history has had a long passage into print. The original typescript was completed by Stanley Jones in 1992, publication was considered as he approached his ninetieth birthday but it was not until after his death in 2006 that the text was edited and prepared for publication by Alasdair Donaldson and Edward H. Milligan. Maidenhead has never been a large meeting but its history is perhaps typical for a meeting of its size - early foundation, meetings in Friends' Houses until a permanent Meeting House was built, somewhat late in 1743, slow growth through the eighteenth century, a new Meeting House in 1803 followed by decline and a period of closure in the late nineteenth century, revival in 1896 and a rebuilt Meeting House in 1935, much improved at various points in the twentieth century. This book RECENT PUBLICATIONS 2015 67 is however largely about the Friends themselves and particularly about the twentieth century history which Stanley Jones had lived through. There are also lists of members since 1810, of clerks and brief biographical notes of Friends before 1960 by Ted Milligan. The appendices also include some relevant extracts from The History of the Life of Thomas Ellwood (1714) and the testimony prepared by the Monthly Meeting for Stanley and Edwina Jones. 68 BIOGRAPHIES BETTY HAGGLUND is Librarian and Learning Resources Manager at Woodbrooke; she also teaches and supervises postgraduate work within the Centre for Research in Quaker Studies. She led the Central England Area Meeting Quakers and World War I project which culminated in the exhibition, 'Faith and Action: Quakers and the First World War' at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery from January - June 2015. Her research interests include 17th, 18th and 19th century Quaker history and texts, and she has particular interests in travel writing and women's writing. She is currently working on an edition of the works of Lilias Skene, a 17th century Aberdeen Quaker poet, and coordinating a crowd-sourced edition of Margaret Fell's writings. OUVER PICKERING is Honorary Fellow, School of English, University of Leeds. He was formerly on the staff of Leeds University Library, where he continues to serve as a Custodian of the Yorkshire Quaker Archives. Alongside many publications relating to medieval English texts and manuscripts, he is the author of "'The Quakers Tea Table Overturned": An EighteenthCentury Moral Satire', published in Quaker Studies, 17 (2013), and of two forthcoming articles on the 17th-century Yorkshire antinomian Josiah Collier (a direct ancestor), whose family converted to Quakerism. Oliver Pickering is an Attender at Ilkley Meeting. JUDITH ROADS is a practising British Quaker and was a senior lecturer at Middlesex University in London until retirement. She taught linguistics and coordinated English language programmes for international students. On leaving full-time work, she embarked on doctoral research in the combined disciplines of corpus linguistics and Quaker Studies, receiving her PhD in 2015. Conference papers include: Quaker Studies Research Association Annual Conference (Birmingham, UK, 2011) International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (Zurich, 2012; Essen 2016), and the Renaissance Society ofAmerica Conference (Boston USA, 2016). Forthcoming journal articles include 'Us' and 'them'; Early Quakers and the Establishment for the Journal of Communication and Religion. PETER SMITH was born and raised in Buckinghamshire and joined the Society of Friends there in 1963. After 40 years as BIOGRAPHIES 69 a local journalist and later head of public relations for a local government association, he began studying history at the University of Hertfordshire. On retirement he moved to Norfolk and the University of East Anglia. His MA dissertation on which this study of Isaac Penington is based was followed by a Ph.D which was awarded by UEA in 2013. Supplements to the Journal of Friends Historical Society 24. THE ATLANTIC COMMUNITY OF EARLY FRIENDS, Presidential address by Frederick B. Tolles. 1952. £1.00 28. PATTERNS OF INFLUENCE IN ANGLO-AMERICAN QUAKERISM. By Thomas E. Drake. 1958. £1.00 29. SOME QUAKER PORTRAITS, CERTAIN AND UNCERTAIN. By John Nickalls. 1958. Illustration. £1.00 33. JOHN PERROT. By Kenneth L. Carroll. 1971. £2.00 32. JOHN WOOLMAN IN ENGLAND, 1772. By Henry J. Cadbury. 1971. £2.00 34. "THE OTHER BRANCH": LONDON Y.M. AND THE HICKSITES, 1827-1912. By Edwin B. Bronner. 1975. £1.25 35. ALEXANDER COWAN WILSON, 1866-1955. Wilson. 1974. £1.00 By Stephen FHS, Occasional Series No.1 MANCHESTER, MANCHESTER AND MANCHESTER AGAIN: from 'SOUND DOCTRINE' to 'A FREE MINISTRY'. By Roger C. Wilson. 1990. Members £2.00, Nonmembers £3.00. Back issues of the JOURNAL can be obtained for £4 per issue for members and £5 for non-members to include postage and packing. Overseas applicants are asked to add £2 to cover the additional cost of post. Requests should be made to c/o The Library, Friends House, 173 Euston Road, London NW12BJ Journals and Supplements Wanted FHS would be glad to receive unwanted copies of back issues of the Journal and of the Supplements. Address to FHS, c/o The Library, Friends House, London NW12BJ. ISSN No. 00719587 Quacks the Printers, 7 Grape Lane, York