No More Learning

Walter Pope, a physician and astronomer, wrote The
Catholic Ballad (1674), which displays genial pleasantry. Another
physician, Archibald Pitcairne, translated and improved the Jacobite
De Juramento illicito (1689). The 'protestant joiner,' Stephen
College, perpetrated some yapping pasquinades. And we find
some professionals. There was Thomas Jordan, the city poet, who
shows a fine lyrical feeling in The Plotting Papists' Litany (1680),
which stands quite apart in structure from the Which nobody can
deny series. His successor as city poet, Matthew Taubman, edited
a volume of tory compositions, of some of which he was presumably
author. Finally, the courtier, song-writer and dramatist, Tom
D'Urfey, composed several tory songs, all of them facile and tune-
ful, and one, The Trimmer (c. 1690), sardonically witty. D'Urfey
furnishes us with a sidelight on the audience of these ballads, when
he tells how he sang one, in 1682, with King Charles at Windsor ;
he holding one part of the paper with me. ' On one side or another,
they appealed to all the nation, and their comparative popularity
was the best gauge of public opinion.
But there were good reasons for the anonymity of this political
literature, poems, ballads and tracts. If the censorship had lapsed
or was inefficient, the law of libel gave the government ample
means for punishing the publishers and authors of anything tending
to civil division, and, naturally, while the whigs had most present
7
a
E. L. VIII
OH. III


## p. 98 (#120) #############################################

98
Political and Ecclesiastical Satire
reason to fear, the tories did not forget the possibility of a turn of
the wheel. The last four years of Charles II saw a number of
prosecutions of booksellers like Nathaniel Thompson, Richard
Janeway, Benjamin Harris and others, and, although these cases do
not seem to have been very efficient deterrents, they tended to
make anonymity advisable as an obvious and easy precaution.
Meanwhile, a straggling and feebler race of prose satires existed
under the shadow of the poems and ballads. Its comparatively
scanty numbers and its weakly condition were, may be, due to the
fact that prose satire could not be disentangled without difficulty
from sober argument. The seventeenth century pamphleteer kept no
terms with his political or ecclesiastical adversaries. His reasoning
is interlarded with invective, and, if possible, with ridicule. Yet
the serious content of his tract may remain obvious, and a
traits of satire are not sufficient to change its classification. In
tracing the course of pure satire, therefore, we are left mostly to a
series of secondrate pamphlets, the authors of which, it would seem,
were distrustful of their argumentative powers and unable to
employ the more popular device of rime.
One amphibious contribution, The Rehearsal Transpros'd
(1672–3), of Andrew Marvell, deserves mention on its satiric
aspect. Though that book belongs essentially to the region of
serious political controversy, its author's design of discrediting his
opponent by ridicule and contumely is too apparent throughout for
it to be excluded from satire. As such, it possesses undeniable
merits. Marvell understood the difficult art of bantering the enemy.
He rakes up Parker's past history, sometimes with a subdued
fun—as when he says that his victim, in his puritan youth, was
wont to put more graves in his porridge than the other fasting
'Grewellers'-sometimes with a more strident invective. He can
rise to a fine indignation when he describes Parker's ingratitude to
Milton. And there is a shrewdness in his humour which brings over
the reader to his side. Yet, with all this, the wit of his book is the
elder cavilling wit of the chop-logic kind. It is a succession of
quips, which need a genius not possessed by Marvell to keep their
savour amidst a later generation. That he had high powers in
humorous comedy was shown in his parody of Charles II, His
Majesty's Most Gracious Speech to Both Houses of Parliament
(1675). Its audacious mockery and satiric grasp of a situation
1. Graves' or 'greaves,' a fatty substance or juice. The word is clearly connected
both with gravy' and the composition used in graving'a ship.


## p. 99 (#121) #############################################

Satirical Narratives and Dialogues 99
>
preserve its fun from evaporating, and exhibit a dramatic faculty
we barely expect in the musing poet of The Garden.
A favourite form of prose, as of poetic, satire was the narrative.
Cabala (1663) is a fine example. Here, we are given delightful
sham minutes of meetings held by the leading nonconformists in
1662. Sardonic and malicious as it is, it includes burlesque of
great talent, as when the well-affected' minister is described as
one who indeed complieth with the public injunction of the
Church, yet professeth they are a burthen and a grief to him. ' It
has a distinct affinity with a much later composition, which, how-
ever, is by a whig and directed against the Jacobites, A true and
impartial Narrative of the Dissenters' New Plot (1690), where the
extreme high church view of English history since the reformation
is parodied in a brilliant, unscrupulous fashion. The gay, triumphant
irony and solemn banter of the piece only set off to better advantage
the serious argument which is implied and, at last, earnestly stated.
The List of goods for sale is a very slight thing compared to
elaborate productions like the above, but it gave opportunity for
skilful thrusts and lasted throughout the period. Books were the
objects most frequently described, but other items appear, as in the
Advertisement of a Sale of choice Goods, which dates from about
1670. One lot consists of 'Two rich Royal Camlet Clokes, faced
with the Protestant Religion, very little the worse for wearing,
valued at 4l. to advance half a Crown at each bidding'; which
must have amused Charles II, if not his brother.
The dialogue was a favourite form for polemic in the party
newspapers. It appears in A Pleasant Battle between tro
Lap-dogs of the Utopian Court (1681), where Nell Gwynn's dog,
following the example of his mistress, wins the day against the
duchess of Portsmouth's. So, too, there are several characters,
like that written by Oldham, but none worth special notice, save
that the railing style gives place to a more polished invective.
Another form, the parable, was in favour under William III. It
was a kind of prolonged fable, where personages of the day appear
as various birds and beasts. Thus, in the nonconformist whig
Parable of the Three Jackdaws (1696), which, perhaps, is identical
with that of The Magpies by Bradshaw, the eagle stands for
Charles II, the falcon for Monmouth, archbishop Sancroft is called
a ‘metropolitical Magpye’ and the dissenters are styled 'blackbirds
and nightingales. '
Along with these distinct genres there were printed some satires
* Cf. Dunton, J. , The Life and Errors of J. D. vol. I, p. 182.
560466 A
7-2


## p. 100 (#122) ############################################

IOO
Political and Ecclesiastical Satire
hard to classify, pretended documents, sham letters and so forth.
The Humble Address of the Atheists (1688) to James II, a wbig
concoction, is superior to most of its fellows, although it has but
scanty merit. Some way below it rank the mock whig Letter from
Amsterdam to a Friend in England (1678) and Father La Chaise's
Project for the Extirpation of Heretics (1688), in which the
opponents of the two factions decorated what they imagined were
the designs of whig or papist with products of a lurid fancy.
When we try to sum up the impression which these satires,
in verse or prose, give us, we are struck at once by the low place
which they hold as literature. Witty they often are, and with
a wit which improves. We change from flouts and jeers and
artificial quips to humorous sarcasm, which owes its effect to the
contrast of the notions expressed, and to its ruthless precision.
But even this is not a very clear advance; the quip had, perhaps,
always been a little popular form, and mere jeering continued to
be the staple satire. In fact, except Oldham, who stands apart,
these authors did not aim at a literary mark. They were the
skirmishers of a political warfare, bandying darts all the more
poisoned and deadly because it was known that most would miss
their billet. Many of them were hirelings with little interest in
the causes they espoused. Their virulence, which seems nowadays
hideous, was mainly professional : and the lewd abuse which fills
those of them which are in rime was accordingly discounted by the
public. It was not a compassionate age. The very danger of the
libeller's trade under the censorship made him the more un-
scrupulous in his choice of means. The tories, as a matter of
course, harp continually on Shaftesbury's ulcer, the result of a
carriage accident, and the silver tap which drained it was the
source of continual nicknames and scoffs : and the whigs are equal
sinners. A debauched riot reigns in most of the poetical satires,
degraded into an absolute passion for the purulent and the ugly.
The writers of them, it would appear, worshipped and loved
animalism for its own sake, not the least when they searched
through every depth of evil in order to defame their adversaries in
the most brutal way possible.


## p. 101 (#123) ############################################

CHAPTER IV
THE EARLY QUAKERS
The rise of the quaker movement in England, which began
with the public preaching of George Fox, just about the time of
the execution of Charles I, was marked by a surprising outburst
of literary activity. The new conception of religion was pro-
pagated with extraordinary zeal, and seemed likely at one time
not only to change the face of English Christianity but to mould,
after the quaker pattern, the religious life of the American
colonies. It was essentially the rediscovery, by men and women
whose whole training and environment were puritan, of the
mystical element which lies close to the heart of Christianity, but
which puritanism, with all its strength, had strangely missed. It
was a revivified consciousness of God, bringing with it the con-
viction that the essence of Christ's religion is not to be found in
submission to outward authority, whether of church or of Bible,
but in a direct experience of God in the soul, and in a life lived in
obedience to His will inwardly revealed.
The overmastering enthusiasm kindled by the new experience,
due, as Fox and his followers believed, to the immediate inspira-
tion of the Holy Spirit, impelled them to make it known by pen
as well as voice. Rude countrymen from the fells of Westmorland,
as well as scholars with a university training-even boys like
James Parnell, who died a martyr in Colchester castle at the age
of nineteen-became prolific writers as well as fervent preachers
of mystical experience and practical righteousness. Books and
pamphlets, broadsheets and public letters, followed one another in
rapid succession, setting forth the new way of life, defending it
against its adversaries, and pleading for liberty of conscience and
of worship. The organisation by which they contrived to get so


## p. 102 (#124) ############################################

IO2
The Early Quakers
large a mass of writing into circulation is not yet fully understood'.
But the fact that they found readers affords noteworthy evidence
of the ferment of men's minds in that day, and of the dominance
over their thoughts and lives of the religious interest.
Of all this vast output, there is not much that could possibly,
by its intrinsic qualities, find any permanent place in English
literature ; its chief interest now is for the curious student of
religious history. Nor can it be said to have influenced in any
appreciable degree the intellectual outlook of English-speaking
peoples, except in so far as it was one of the unnoticed factors in
the evolution of religious thought from the hard dogmatism of
puritan days to a more liberal and ethical interpretation of
Christianity. Most of the early quaker writings, having served
their temporary purpose, were read, so far as they continued to
be used at all, by the adherents of the new conception of religious
life, and by few or none beside.
That is only what would naturally be expected, when we look
at the forces that gave birth to these writings and at the con-
ditions under which they were poured forth. The purpose of these
numerous authors was not intellectual, and not (primarily at
least) theological, but experimental. They felt an inward com-
pulsion to make known to the world 'what God had done for
them,' that they might draw others into the same experience, and
into the kind of life to which it led. Moreover, the sense of
direct Divine communion and guidance, in which they lived, found
expression in terms that too often seemed to deny to the Christian
soul any place for the artistic faculty, and even for the develop-
ment of the intellectual powers. In striving to set forth what
they had discovered, they used, without transcending it, the
philosophical dualism of their day, which divided the world of
experience into water-tight compartments, the natural and the
spiritual, the human and the Divine. The terminology of the
seventeenth century, even if it served well enough to set forth
the 'religions of authority,' broke down when the quakers tried
to use it to expound their religion of the Spirit. ' The conception
of the Divine immanence, in the light of which alone they could
have found adequate expression for their experience, had been
well-nigh lost. The Power which they felt working wi in them
1 'The history of the Quaker Press in London has yet to be written. How did the
Society of Friends, who had no connection whatever with the Company of Stationers,
manage to pour out so many books in defence of their principles through all this
troublous period? That has yet to be made krown. ' Arber, Edward, preface to the
Term Catalogucs, 1668–1709 (1903).


## p. 103 (#125) ############################################

Early Quaker Journals 103
was set forth by them in language representing it as wholly
transcendental. It was only (they believed) when ‘the creature' and
all his works were laid in the dust that the light of 'the Creator'
could shine undimmed within their souls. In the quakers, as
often in other mystics, the ascetic impulse, which a dualistic
theory has usually aroused in the minds of those who take religion
seriously, tended to aesthetic and intellectual poverty. Hence, it
is only a few of these multitudinous works that, rising above the
general level, either in thought or style, deserve attention in a
history of English literature.
The most characteristic form into which the literary impulse
of the mystic has thrown itself, from Augustine's Confessions to
Madame Guyon, is that of the attempt to 'testify to the workings
of God' in his soul. And in no group of mystics has that impulse
found more general expression than in the early quakers. Their
Journals, though written without pretensions to literary art,
maintain a high level of sincere and often naïve self-portraiture,
and the best of them contain a rich store of material for the
student of the 'varieties of religious experience. ' But they are
seldom unhealthily introspective; they contain moving accounts
of persecution and suffering, borne with unflinching fortitude, in
obedience to what it was believed the will of God required; of
passive resistance to injustice and oppression, recounted often
with humour and rarely with bitterness; of adventures by land
and sea, in which the guiding hand and providential arm of God
are magnified. The quaint individuality of these men and women
is seldom lost, though the stamp of their leader Fox is upon them,
and their inward experiences clothe themselves in the forms of
expression which he first chose, and which soon became current
coin in the body which he founded. 'I was moved of the Lord'
to go here and there; 'weighty exercise came upon me'; ‘my
mind was retired to the Lord' in the midst of outward tumult,
and so forth.
George Fox's Journal is by far the most noteworthy of all
these autobiographical efforts, and it is one which, for originality,
spontaneity and unconscious power of sincere self-expression, is
probably without a rival in religious literature. George Fox was
a man of poor education, who read little except his Bible, and
who, with pen in hand, to the last could hardly spell or construct
a grammatical sentence. Yet, such was the intense reality of his


## p. 104 (#126) ############################################

104
The Early Quakers
experience, and such the clearness of his inward vision, that his
narrative, dictated, for the most part, to willing amanuenses,
burns with the flame of truth and often shines with the light of
artless beauty? The story of his early struggles with darkness
and despair is in striking contrast with another contemporary
self-portraiture, that of Bunyan in his Grace Abounding. Fox
does not tell us of personal terrors of judgment to come; his grief
is that temptations are upon him, and he cannot see light. The
professors of religion to whom he turns for help are empty hollow
casks,' in whom he cannot find reality beneath the outward show.
My troubles continued, and I was often under great temptations; I fasted
mnoh, and walked abroad in solitary places many days, and often took my
Bible, and went and sat in hollow trees and lonesome places till night came
on; and frequently, in the night, walked mournfully about by myself; for
I was a man of sorrows in the times of the first workings of the Lord
in me. . . .
As I had forsaken the priests, so I left the separate preachers also, and
those esteemed the most experienced people, for I saw that there was none
among them all that could speak to my condition. When all my hopes in
them and in all men were gone, so that I had nothing outwardly to help me,
nor could I tell what to do; then, 0! then I heard a voice which said, 'there
is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition'; and when I heard
it, my heart did leap for joy. Then the Lord let me see why there was none
apon the earth that could speak to my condition, namely, that I might give
him all the glory.
After telling of an inward manifestation of the powers of evil
‘in the hearts and minds of wicked men,' he goes on:
6
I cried unto the Lord, saying, “Why should I be thus, secing I was nover
addicted to commit these evils ? ' and the Lord answered, That it was needful
I should have a sense of all conditions, how else should I speak to all con-
ditions ? ' and in this I saw the infinite love of God. I saw also that there
was an ocean of darkness and death; but an infinite ocean of light and love,
which flowed over the ocean of darkness. In that also I saw the infinite love
of God, and I had great openings. . . .
Now the Lord opened to me by his invisible power, ‘that every man was
enlightened by the divine light of Christ'; and I saw it shine through all;
and that they that believed in it came out of condemnation to the light of
life, and becaine the children of it; but they that hated it, and did not believe in
it, were condemned by it, though they made a profession of Christ. . . . These
things I did not see by the help of man, nor by the letter, though they are
written in the letter; but I saw them in the light of the Lord Jesus Christ,
and by his immediate Spirit and power, as did the holy men of God, by whom
the Holy Scriptures were written. Yet I had no slight esteem of the Holy
i The Journal, as hitherto printed, was edited in grammatical English by Ellwood
and other Friends. The original has now been published verbatim, with copious notes,
by the Cambridge University Press.


## p. 105 (#127) ############################################

George Fox and Thomas Ellwood 105
Scriptures, but they were very precious to me, for I was in that Spirit by
which they were given forth; and what the Lord opened to me, I afterwards
found was agreeable to them.
The above passages may serve to illustrate at once the sim-
plicity and directness of Fox's style, and, also, the kernel of the
new interpretation of the Christian Gospel which he and his
followers proclaimed, and which brought them into constant
collision with the ecclesiastics and the Bible-worshippers of their
day. The Journal is the record, told in the same simple and
often racy language, of their conflicts with 'priests' and magistrates
and howling mobs; of their valiant efforts to secure justice, and
to solace the oppressed in their sufferings; of troubles from
the 'ranters' who joined the movement; and of the successful
endeavours, made by one who was no mere fanatic, but in whose
mind flowed a clear spring of more than worldly wisdom, to
build up an organisation which should be proof against the
anarchic tendencies of a system that recognised no ultimate
authority but the Light Within.
Thomas Ellwood, son of an Oxfordshire squire, was a man of
liberal education, who, though he moved in good society, was
constrained in early years to throw in his lot with the despised
people of God. ' He was an intimate friend of William Penn
and Isaac Penington; and, through the good offices of the latter,
he was for some years engaged as reader to the poet Milton in
his blindness. It was Ellwood, according to a doubtful tradition",
who, after reading with delight the manuscript of Paradise Lost,
suggested to Milton the theme afterwards worked out in Paradise
Regained.
The History of the Life of Thomas Ellwood, written by his
own hand, gives a very lively picture of his early life and home
surroundings, of inward struggles, of 'passive resistance to the
monstrous tyranny of his father, and of his share in the persecu-
tions to which all his people were subjected. His description of
prisons and prison life in the seventeenth century is of great
historical value. He writes in a vivid, racy style, the interest of
which rarely or never flags. He hits off, in a fashion worthy of
Bunyan, the characters alike of friends and persecutors; and (also
like Bunyan) he intersperses his prose narrative with verses which
he mistakes for poetry.
Take, for illustration, the story of John Ovey, the fellmonger
magistrate 'accustomed to ride upon his pack of skins,' 'grey-
i Of. ante, vol. vii, p. 120.
a


## p. 106 (#128) ############################################

106
The Early Quakers
headed and elderly,' who had been a preacher among the baptists
or independents and had been drawn towards Friends. Ellwood
took him to a meeting at Isaac Penington's, which was unexpectedly
broken up by a troop of horse? :
We all sate still in our places, except my companion John Ovey, who sate
next to me. But he being of a profession that approved Peter's advice to his
Lord, to save himself, soon took the alarm, and with the nimbleness of a
stripling, cutting a caper over the form that stood before him, ran quickly
out at a private door (which he had before observed) which led through the
parlour into the gardens, and from thence into an orchard; where he hid
himself in a place so obscure, and withal so convenient for his intelligence by
observation of what passed, that no one of the family could scarce have found
a likelier.
Several of the party are hurried away four miles to a
magistrate, but are released :
Back then we went to Isaac Penington's. But when we came thither,
O the work we had with poor John Ovey! He was so dejected in mind, so
covered with shame and confusion of face for his cowardliness, that we had
enough to do to pacify him towards himself.
John Gratton was another quaker of good education, brought
up in the presbyterian faith in Derbyshire. Like many mystics,
he was subject to deep inward exercises, frequently culminating
in visions or other incursions from the deeper layers of personality;
and his Journal, like that of George Fox, is of great interest to
the student of religious psychology. He was, however, a man of
sane and sober spirit, and there is no question as to his funda-
mental orthodoxy. He writes with ease and clearness, but lacks
the crisp, pungent manner of Fox and Ellwood. Like most of his
contemporaries, he is apt to be long-winded.
One of the liveliest and best written of these early auto-
biographies is that of Richard Davies, of Welshpool, who tells the
story of his own 'convincement' and sufferings, and of the first
propagation of the 'truth' in Wales.
The Memoir of John Roberts, of Cirencester (who died in
1683), was written by his son Daniel in 1725; yet it properly
belongs to this period, since the notes from which it is compiled
must have been, to a large extent, contemporary with the events
described For its brightness and unfailing humour, it well
deserves a place in English literature. Oliver Wendell Holmes
said of it:
See Masson's Milton, vol. vi, pp. 586—8, for a lively description of the difficulties
encountered by magistrates in attempting to put a forcible stop to the Friends'
worship.


## p. 107 (#129) ############################################

William Penn
107
It is as good as gold-better than gold-every page of it. It is comforting
to meet, even in a book, a man who is perfectly simple-hearted, clear-headed,
and brave in all conditions. The story is admirably told too-dramatically,
vividly1.
The great mass of early quaker writings may be described
as mystical, in the sense that they seek to set forth the reality of
the experience of direct Divine communion, and the life of self-
surrender and obedience as at once the condition and the fruit of
that experience. But we may distinguish as mystical writings
proper those of the works of the quakers which are not mainly
autobiographical on the one hand, or controversial on the other.
William Penn, son of the admiral Penn frequently mentioned
by Pepys, is the most widely known of the early quakers—chiefly
as the founder and first governor of the colony of Pennsylvania.
His character has been fiercely assailed by Macaulay and others;
but there seems no reason to doubt that, whatever difficulties a
quaker statesman may have had to encounter in putting his
principles consistently into practice, he remained absolutely
sincere and worthy of the respect in which he was always held
by his people. Though 'convinced' of the truth of the quaker
way of life at the age of 22, he does not seem to have been a
mystic by temperament, but rather a clear-headed English man
of action, whose principles were formed, not in the school of
speculation, but in that of experience. Though possessed of rich
stores of learning, and great qualities as a statesman, he can
hardly be regarded as a deep thinker; and, as an author, in
common with nearly all the writers of his time, he is often tedious
and infelicitous in expression
The best known of his early works, No Cross No Crown, was
written at the age of 24, while he was in prison in the Tower for
the 'blasphemy' of a pamphlet, The Sandy Foundation Shaken,
in which he had assailed what were regarded as the strongholds of
the Christian faith. His purpose in writing No Cross No Crown
he describes as 'to show the nature and discipline of the holy
Cross of Christ; and that the denial of self. . . is the alone way to
the Rest and Kingdom of God. ' This is a familiar theme with
mystics; but Penn interprets the cross with the utmost puritan
6
* From a prefatory letter to the first complete edition, entitled A Quaker of the
olden Time, 1898.
· This criticism does not apply to Some Fruits of Solitude (see later), which is
written in crisp and excellent English.


## p. 108 (#130) ############################################

108
Quakers
The Early
rigour, decrying luxury and most of the customary ways of society.
His effort is a warning against wrath to come, and only incidentally
an invitation to enjoy the crown of rest in the kingdom here and
now.
Come, Reader, hearken to me awhile; I seek thy salvation; that's my Plot;
thou wilt forgive me. A Refiner is come near thee, His Grace hath appeared
to thee; it shows thee the World's lusts, and teacheth thee to deny them,
Receive His leaven and it will change thee; His medicine and it will cure
thee. This is the Crown, but where is the Cross? Where is the bitter cup
and bloody baptism?
Come, Reader, be like him; for this transcendent Joy
lift up thy head above the World; then thy Salvation will draw nigh
indeed.
To avoid giving a false impression of narrowness in Penn, it
should be added that he was a warm friend of education, and fully
alive to its importance.
'Nature,' he says (in his Address to Protestants), 'is an excellent book,
pleasant and profitable; but how few, alas! are learned either in the Macro-
cosm or their Microcosm! I wish this were better understood; it would be
both our honour and advantage. '
He made ample provision for education in his colony; and he was
the first statesman in power willing to run the risk of granting
absolute liberty of conscience and of worship.
More of a mystic than Penn was his friend Isaac Penington,
son of an alderman and high sheriff of London who was one of the
regicide judges. Penington was a graduate of Cambridge, as
Penn was of Oxford. The stern and gloomy Calvinism in which
he had been brought up distressed his tender spirit, and it was not
till after years of deep inward questioning and isolation, and even
of agnosticism, that he found peace at last by identifying himself
with the quakers, whose teaching he had known but had long
despised as uncouth and contrary to reason. He came to find
the presence and power of the Most High among them,' and
declares:
I have met with my God; I have met with my Saviour; and he hath not
been present with me without his salvation; but I have felt the healings drop
upon my soul from under his wings. I have met with the true knowledge,
the knowledge of life.
Penington's writings, it has been recently said, 'are diffuse,
and on the whole unreadable. Even the titles of his voluminous
works are forgotten now; but the purest breath of Christian
mysticism is in them for those who have the patience to find it
and the power to breathe it. Take the following passage as
typical of many others:


## p. 109 (#131) ############################################

Isaac and Mary Penington. James Nayler 109
6
Know what it is that is to walk in the path of life, and indeed is alone
capable of walking therein. It is that which groans, and which mourns;
that which is begotten of God in thee. The path of life is for the seed of life.
The true knowledge of the way, with the walking in the way, is reserved for
God's child, for God's traveller. Therefore keep in the regeneration, keep in
the birth; be no more than God hath made thee. Give over thine own
willing; give over thine own running; give over thine own desiring to know
or to be anything, and sink down to the seed which God sows in the heart
and let that grow in thee.
Before the light dawned on Isaac Penington, he had found a
kindred spirit in the youthful lady Springett (born Mary Proude),
who, after the death of her husband at the siege of Arundel,
married Penington, as she says herself, that she might be service-
able to him in his desolate condition. ' Their love was the
mature passion of pure and intense natures,' and together they
suffered cheerfully the loss of worldly goods and frequent separa-
tions when Penington was thrown into prison for what he
believed to be the truth. A beautiful and worthy testimony
remains in the words which Mary Penington wrote, by the bedside
of her sick child, when her husband had been called away from
earth:
Ah me! he is gone! he that none exceeded in kindness, in tenderness, in
love inexpressible to the relation as a wife. Next to the love of God in Christ
Jesus to my soul, was his love precious and delightful to me. My bosom-one!
that was as my guide and counsellor! my pleasant companion! my tender
sympathising friend! as near to the sense of my pain, sorrow, grief, and
trouble as it was possible. Yet this great help and benefit is gone; and I,
a poor worm, a very little one to him, compassed about with many infirmities,
through mercy let him go without an unadvised word of discontent, or
inordinate grief.
There is no more pathetic figure, in the history of early
quakerism, than that of the unhappy James Nayler, whose
grievous lapse into sheer extravagance led him, as a sign of the
coming of the living Christ, to allow a crowd of silly women to
hail him as the Messiah; and who, after his case had been debated
at length in the House of Commons, bore with deep contrition and
exemplary patience the ferocious punishment which was meted
out to him. His writings after this baptism of fire breathe the
purest spirit of inward penitence and forgiving love. The following
are the words of his ‘last Testimony,' taken down about two hours
before his death:
There is a spirit which I feel, that delights to do no evil, nor to revenge
any wrong, but delights to endure all things, in hope to enjoy its own in the
end. Its hope is to outlive all wrath and contention, and to weary out all
exaltation and cruelty, or whatever is of a nature contrary to itself. It sees


## p. 110 (#132) ############################################

IIO
The Early Quakers
to the end of all temptations; as it bears no evil in itself, so it conceives none
in thoughts to any other; if it be betrayed it bears it; for its ground and
spring is in the mercies and forgiveness of God. Its crown is meekness, its
life is everlasting love unfeigned; it takes its Kingdom with entreaty and not
with contention, and keeps it by lowliness of mind.
Another beautiful testimony to the spirit that animated those
early quakers is given by William Dewsbury who, shortly before
his death, said, after a long and terrible imprisonment in Warwick
castle:
This I can say, I never played the coward, but joyfully entered Prisons as
Palaces, telling mine enemies to hold me there as long as they could, and in
the Prison House I sung praises to my God, and esteemed the Bolts and
Locks put upon me as Jewels, and in the name of the Eternal God I alway
got the Victory.
The early quakers, like most Christian mystics, had no thought
of setting themselves in opposition to fundamental orthodoxy as
they understood it. But, inevitably, their constant appeal to the
Light Within, and their consequent refusal to bow down to
outward authority, brought them into fierce conflict with the
religious teachers of their day, by most of whom the Bible had
been erected into the final and only 'rule' of faith and practice.
And so, as they were compelled to defend themselves against
attacks which condemned them, with indiscriminate violence, as
papists, heretics, atheists and blasphemers, the purpose of their
writings became more and more directly theological. On both
sides, it is to be feared, abuse counted for more than argument,
and the oblivion into which these reams of printed matter have
fallen cannot be said to have been undeserved.
So early as 1656, John Bunyan attacked the quakers, without
explicitly naming them, in Some Gospel Truths Opened, and was
answered by Edward Burrough and George Fox.
George Fox. Thomas Hicks,
the baptist, roused the wrath of Ellwood by his Dialogue between
a Christian and a Quaker; and Richard Baxter, in his Quaker's
Catechism, complaining of their 'violent and railing language,'
denounced them as 'abominable infidels,' Pagans' and 'a genera-
tion of the Devil. ' In kindlier vein, Henry More, the Cambridge
Platonist, while admitting as 'safe and reasonable' the principle
of the light within a man,' expressed his sorrow at their 'uncouth
and ridiculous' opinions, and was sorely grieved when his friend
the learned and philosophical viscountess Conway (daughter of
speaker Finch) joined herself to what he described as the most
6


## p. 111 (#133) ############################################

Samuel Fisher. Barclay's Apology III
melancholy sect that ever was in the world. ' To all these, and
many more, the quakers issued voluminous replies 1.
Of Penn's controversial writings, The Sandy Foundation
Shaken, which got him into the Tower; Innocency with her Open
Face, by which he won his release; The Christian Quaker, and
Primitive Christianity Revived, it is needless now to speak. A
word must, however, be said concerning the prodigious apologia
of Samuel Fisher (1666), entitled Rusticus ad Academicos: a work
of nearly 800 quarto pages, closely printed, containing single
sentences that sometimes run to a page and a half? . In spite of
its incredible long-windedness, it is a work of great learning and
sound sense. Fisher deals in a quite modern manner with the
canon of Scripture, showing wide knowledge of its history, and
also of the various Biblical manuscripts then accessible to scholars.
He can be caustic, too, when he chooses, as when he replies to the
argument of dean Owen that the Holy Spirit, while preserving
somewhere the true text, has arranged variations between the MSS
in order to encourage diligence in the study of Scripture-
'Whence came this whiffle and whimzy within the circumference
of thy figmentitious fancy ? '
There is one book, out of all this welter of controversy, that
can be read today with interest and profit: An Apology for the
True Christian Divinity, by Robert Barclay, son of David
Barclay, of Ury, who had served as a soldier under Gustavus
Adolphus, and had afterwards joined the quakers. Robert Barclay
was brought up among the strictest Calvinists in Scotland, and
among Catholics during his studies in Paris; nevertheless, without
any urging from his father, he, also, at the age of nineteen became
a quaker.
6
When I came into the silent assemblies of God's people, I felt a secret
power among them, which touched my heart; and as I gave way unto it,
I found the evil weakening in me, and the good raised up; and so I became
thus knit and united unto them, hungering more and more after the in-
crease of this power and life, whereby I might feel myself perfectly
redeemed 3.
1 In vol. 1 of E. Arber's Term Catalogues, the titles are given of 44 books written
against the quakers between the years 1671 and 1680. Joseph Smith's Bibliotheca
Anti-Quakeriana (1873), contains an alphabetical catalogue of many hundreds of these
writings. George Fox's The Great Mystery (1659) has replies to over one hundred
attacks on the quakers.
· The index to this extraordinary work is worth examining as a quaint example of
the controversial methods of the seventeenth century. See, under the heading Nick-
names,' the extraordinary selection of terms applied to the quakers.
3 Apology, Proposition xi, $ 7.


## p. 112 (#134) ############################################

I I2
The Early Quakers
Robert Barclay is the first of the very few theologians whom
the Society of Friends has produced. Possessed of remarkable
.
natural gifts, he set himself deliberately to the study of theology,
mastering Greek and Hebrew, the writings of the Fathers and the
history of the Christian church. His Apology was written at the
early age of 28, but is the work of a mature mind. It was written
first in Latin, was afterwards translated into English and low
Dutch and became the chief classic of the quaker faith. Learned
and scholastic as it is, the style is clear and flowing, and it can be
read with ease. In a series of fifteen propositions, or Theses
Theologicae, he deals with the true foundation of knowledge, with
immediate revelation, with the Scriptures, with universal and
saving Light, and so forth.
The following passage will serve to illustrate at once his style
and his treatment of the problem of justification:
We understand not by this Justification by Christ, barely the good works
even wrought by the Spirit of Christ; for they, as Protestants truly affirm,
are rather the effect of Justification than the cause of it; but we understand
the formation of Christ in us, Christ born and brought forth in us, from
which good works as naturally proceed as fruit from a fruitful tree. It is
this inward birth in us bringing forth righteousness and holiness in us, that
doth justify us; which having removed and done away the contrary nature
and spirit that did bear rule and bring condemnation, now is in dominion
over all in our hearts. . . . This is to be clothed with Christ, and to have put
him on, whom God therefore truly accounteth righteous and just. . . . By this
also comes the communication of the goods of Christ into us, by which we
come to be made partakers of the divine nature, as saith 2 Peter i. 4, and are
made one with him, as the branches with the vine, and have a title and right
to what he hath done and suffered for us; so that his obedience becomes ours,
his righteousness ours, his death and sufferings ours).
There is very little in the writings of the early quakers that
has not some directly practical or controversial aim. Among
more purely literary efforts, however, mention should be made of
William Penn's Some Fruits of Solitude, and of the rare attempts
at poetry, or, rather, versification, put forth by one or two of them.
R. L. Stevenson has told of the comfort and refreshment he
gained, in sickness and loneliness, from a copy of Some Fruits of
Solitude which he picked up in the streets of San Francisco. It
is a collection of aphorisms, ‘fruits,' as Penn calls them, that may
serve the reader for texts to preach to himself upon. ' It has the
virtue, rare, indeed, at that time and among these writers, of
terseness and condensation; the maxims are expressed, without
any straining after literary effect, in natural, clear and cogent
1 Apology, Proposition vii, $ 3.


## p. 113 (#135) ############################################

Penn's Aphorisms. Quaker Verse 113
English. It is lit up with a kindly humour, and its satire, while
mordant at times, is never bitter or cynical. The first part was
written between 1690 and 1693, when Penn was living in seclusion
in London under suspicion of treachery, owing to his former
friendship with James II. Twice he was arrested and brought to
trial on a charge of disloyalty, but, on both occasions, was dis-
charged. This explains why the book was published anonymously,
but its authorship has now been conclusively proved? The second
part, More Fruits of Solitude, dates from just after the accession
of queen Anne.
The following will serve as evidence of the pungent brevity
with which Penn could express himself when he chose:
Truth often suffers more by the beat of its defenders than from the
arguments of its opposers.
Let the People think they govern, and they will be governed.
The Humble, Meek, Merciful, Just, Pious, and Devout souls, are every-
where of one religion; and when death has taken off the mask they will
know one another, though the diverse liveries they wear here makes them
strangers.
Speak properly, and in as few words as you can, but always plainly; for
the end of speech is not ostentation, but to be understood.
This is the comfort of friends, that, though they may be said to die, yet
their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because
immortal.
Of poetry, in the writings of the early quakers, there is nothing
that deserves the name. Such versification as we find is, for the
most part, prosaic disquisition on moral and spiritual themes,
marked by piety without inspiration, and facility without imagina-
tion. Thomas Ellwood, in addition to the 'poems' which are
scattered through his autobiography, issued A Collection of Poems
on Various Subjects, from which we extract the following:
He's a true lover, not who can subdue
Monsters and giants for his mistress' sake,
And sighs perhaps, and weeps, with much ado
For fear she should some other happy make;
But who so far her happiness prefers
Before his own, that he can be content
To sacrifice his own to purchase hers,
Though with the price of his own banishment.
The quakers, as is well known, gave to women an equal place
with men in the ministries of the spiritual life; and perhaps the
only approach to poetry in their literary output, before the days
of Barton and Whittier, is to be found in a little volume of letters
1 See A Quaker Post Bag, 1910, p. 27.
E. L. VIII.
CH. IV.
8


## p. 114 (#136) ############################################

114
The Early Quakers
and poems entitled Fruits of Retirement, by Mary Mollineux
(born Southworth), published shortly after her death in 1695.
It includes the following Meditations in Trouble:
0 Whither is he gone? Or where
Shall I go mourn, till he appear,
Who is my life, my love?
Alas, how shall I move
Him to return, that's secretly retired
Like unto one displeased,
Who, till he be appeased,
My heart cannot be eased ?
He is one lovely, and to be admired!
It might have been expected that the deep inward experiences
of these quaker mystics would have found spontaneous expression
in lyrical verse, but so it was not to be. Very early, their spiritual
life became confined in bonds, and freedom and spontaneity were
largely lost in a rigour of thought and life that left little scope for
originality of inspired expression. With the eighteenth century,
the glow of the first experience faded, and the third genera-
tion of the quakers, while retaining much of the purity and
unworldliness and spirituality of their predecessors, became, for
the most part, the children of a tradition. Quietism settled down
upon them, a quietism which, while it produced noble fruit in a
John Woolman and an Elizabeth Fry, left the majority more
concerned to maintain the discipline of a 'peculiar people' than
to make known a spiritual Gospel to the world.


## p. 115 (#137) ############################################

CHAPTER V
THE RESTORATION DRAMA
Ι
With the ordinance of 2 September 1642, commanding the
closing of the theatres and the total suppression of stage plays,
the long and brilliant chapter of the drama that had known the
triumphs of the days of Elizabeth and her two successors came to
an abrupt and dismal end. Although declared rogues by a later
act and threatened with the whipping-post for pursuing their
calling, the actors did not at once obey these stringent laws'.
We hear of performances 'three or four miles, or more, out of
town,' and of plays acted at the Cockpit, for example in 1648,
when 'a party of soldiers beset the house and carried the actors
away in their habits to Hatton House, then a prison. During the
commonwealth, occasional performances were connived at, 'some-
times in noblemen's houses. . . where the nobility and gentry met,
but in no great numbers'; at others, in seasons of festivals such
as Christmas or Bartholomew fair, even at the old playhouses,
among them the Red Bull. But, even with bribes to the guard
at Whitehall, immunity against arrest and safety from rough
handling for auditor and actor were not to be assured. It is not
wonderful that, during the rebellion, the players declared them-
selves, almost to a man, on the side of the king. Several of them
served with distinction on the royalist side; but the end of the
war found most of them in exile with their betters or reduced to
poverty
1 For the texts of the most important of these laws, see Hazlitt, W. C. , The
English Drama and Stage, 1543—1664, Roxburghe Library, 1869, pp. 63–70.
? On this topic, see Wright's Historia Histrionica, first published in 1699, reprinted
in Dodsley, vol. xv.
82


## p. 116 (#138) ############################################

116
The Restoration Drama
9
Amusements of the dramatic kind being now under the ban,
various devices were employed to evade the letter of the lawl.
Interesting among these were the 'drolls' or 'droll-humours,' as
they were called-farces or humorous scenes adapted from current
plays and staged, for the most part, on extemporised scaffolds, at
taverns and fairs, and sometimes, even, at regular theatres? . Thus,
a 'droll,' entitled Merry Conceits of Bottom the Weaver, was
printed as early as 1646, and a dozen or so by Robert Cox, notable
for his performance in them. A large collection entitled The Wits,
or Sport upon Sport, collected by Francis Kirkman the book-
seller, appeared in the early seventies, when the acting of these
things had been superseded by the revival of the more regular
drama. It may be remarked, in passing, that the application
of the term 'droll' to stage recitals in commonwealth days is alike
distinguishable from its earlier employment to signify a puppet or
a puppet-show and from the use of the word 'drollery' which was
applied to any piece of humour or ribaldry in verse3. Among
'drolls' derived from well known plays may be named The Grave
Diggers' Colloquy from Hamlet; Falstaff, The Bouncing Knight
from Henry IV; and The Buckbasket Mishap from The Merry
Wives. Other scenes, like Cox's Humours of Simpleton the
Smith and John Swabber were inventions of the actors. All were
contrived to please the vulgar and appeal to the least refined.
Towards the close of Cromwell's rule, the laws against dramatic
entertainments appear to have been somewhat relaxed, and Sir
William D'Avenant, who had been governor of the king and
queen's company of players, acting at the Cockpit, and had held a
patent, dated 1639, empowering him to erect a new playhouse, was
obviously the man first to provide for a returning interest in plays.
D'Avenant's earlier plays and masques* have already been men-
tioned in a previous volume of this work. The son of an Oxford
tavern keeper, and, if the story be authentic, Shakespeare's godson,
D'Avenant had been taken up by the court; he had staged plays
in the manner of Fletcher as early as 1630; had succeeded Ben
Jonson as poet laureate in 1638, and, later, had served the royal
1 Such was the masque of the Inner Temple, November 1651, Gardiner, History of
the Commonwealth and the Protectorate, vol. 11, pp. 11, 12.
2 Ward, History of English Dramatic Literature, vol. II, p. 280.
3 J. W. Ebsworth’s reprint of Westminster Drolleries, 1672, is a collection of
humorous verse and non-dramatic. His introduction, sometimes cited in this con.
nection, little concerns the dramatic droll. ' Halliwell-Phillipps reprinted several
Shakespearean drolls'in 1859.
• See ante, vol. vi, p. 240.
6
<


## p. 117 (#139) ############################################

Sir William D'Avenant
117
6
party through many vicissitudes afield and in intrigue abroad and
at home, suffering imprisonment for several years and narrowly
escaping the gallows. In the later years of the commonwealth,
he had lived more quietly in London and, at length, chiefly through
the influence of the lord-keeper, Sir Bulstrode Whitelocke, obtained
authority for the production of a species of quasi-dramatic enter-
-
tainment which, though given at private houses, was public in so
far as money was taken for entrance. D'Avenant's earliest venture
in this kind was entitled The First Day's Entertainment at Rut-
land House, 'by declamation and music, after the manner of the
ancients, printed in 1657, and staged 21 May of the previous year.
By some, this venture has been called 'an opera'; and, strangely
enough, D'Avenant refers to it by this title in his prologue and
elsewhere. The First Day's Entertainment is really made up
of two pairs of speeches, the first by Diogenes and Aristophanes
successively "against and for, public entertainment, by moral pre-
sentation,' the second, in lighter vein, between a Parisian and a
Londoner on the respective merits of the two cities. The whole
was diversified with music by Coleman, Lawes (composer of the
music of Comus) and other musicians of repute in their day.
D'Avenant had made provision for four hundred auditors, but
only a hundred and fifty appeared. Emboldened, however, by this
qualified success, he projected a more ambitious entertainment.
This was the celebrated Siege of Rhodes, 'made a representation
by the art of prospective in scenes and the story sung in recitative
music,' presented in August 1656. In an address . To the Reader,'
which appears in the first edition of that year, but was not after-
wards reprinted, D'Avenant points out that
the story as represented. . . is heroical, and notwithstanding the continual
hurry and busy agitations of a hot siege, is (I hope) intelligibly conveyed to
advance the characters of virtue in the shapes of valour and conjugal love.
The author was too close to triumphant puritanisn not to feel it
necessary to justify the moral aspects of his art. Of the recitative
music, an 'unpracticed' novelty in England, the author tells us
U
that it was composed and exercised by the most transcendent
of England in that art’; and it is clear that the cast was chosen
with reference to this important operatic feature. As to the five
changes of scene, he regrets that all is confined to eleven foot in
height and about fifteen in depth including the places of passage
reserved for the music': a 'narrow allowance,' he continues, 'for
the fleet of Solyman the Magnificent, his army, the Island of
Rhodes and the varieties attending the siege of the city. The


## p. 118 (#140) ############################################

118
The Restoration Drama
Siege of Rhodes, on the dramatic side, is an amplified situation,
laying no claim to plot, characterisation or variety save such as
arises from change of scene, appropriate costume and attendant
music. The Rehearsal ridicules a battle' performed in recitative
music by seven persons only'; and it must be confessed that this
‘first English opera' is dramatically as absurd as its species has
continued, with certain exceptions, ever since. The Siege of
Rhodes is often described as the first English play to employ
scenery and the first in which an actress appeared on the English
stage. Neither of these statements is correct. Changes of scenery
and even 'perspective in scene' were in vogue, if not common,
long before 1656 As to women on the stage, not to mention
some earlier examples, Mrs Coleman, who 'played' the part of
Ianthe in The Siege, had already sung in The First Day's Enter-
tainment and was chosen, doubtless, in both instances for her voice
rather than for her acting® In 1658, D'Avenant opened the
.
Cockpit theatre in Drury lane, producing there two similar
operas, The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru and The History
of Sir Francis Draket. Their ‘historical' intent and scenic
novelty may well have disarmed puritan suspicion, though Richard
Cromwell is said to have ordered an enquiry into the performance
at the Cockpit, of which, however, nothing came.
Affairs were now moving rapidly towards the restoration of
king Charles. General Monck arrived in London in the first days
of February 1659/60, and one John Rhodes, a bookseller and
sometime keeper of the wardrobe of the king's company at Black-
friars, obtained a licence from the existing authorities for the
formation of a dramatic company. A second company gathered
at the Red Bull, a third at Salisbury court in Whitefriars, and
Sir Henry Herbert, master of the revels, awoke to the duties
(and prospective emoluments) of an office for long years held by
him in hope and abeyance.