A Book Of Quaker Saints Part 2

What a wicked man he must be, to be punished by being put in this dreadful place! Certainly, if he has committed some dreadful crime, he has found a terrible punishment. But does he look wicked? See, at last he is too stiff and weary to move about any longer. In spite of the rain and the wind he sinks down exhausted upon a rickety chair and draws it to the spot where there is the best chance of a little shelter. There he sits in silence for some time. He is soaked to the skin, as well as tired and stiff and hungry. There is a small mug by the door, but it is empty and there is not a sign of food. Some bitter water to drink and a small piece of bread are all the food he has had to-day, and that is all gone now, for it was so very little. In this place a small threepenny loaf of bread has sometimes to last for three weeks. This poor man must be utterly miserable and wretched. But is he? Let us watch him.

Do you think he can be a wicked man after all? Is not the prisoner being punished through some dreadful mistake? He looks kind and good, and, stranger still, he looks happy, even through all his sufferings in this horrible prison. His face has a sort of brightness in it, like the mysterious light there is sometimes to be seen in a dark sky, behind a thunderstorm. A radiance is about him too as if, in spite of all he is enduring, he has some big joy that s.h.i.+nes through everything and makes it seem worth while.

He is actually 'letting the sunlight through,' even in this dismal place. Any one who can do that must be a very real and a very big saint indeed. We must just find out all that we can about him. Let us take a good look at him now, while we have the chance. Then we shall know him another time, when we meet him again, having all sorts of adventures in all sorts of places. It is impossible to see his eyes, as he sits by the bed, for they are downcast, but we can see that he has a long, nearly straight nose, and lips tightly pressed together.

His hair is parted and hangs down on each side of his head, stiff and lank now, owing to the wet, but in happier days it must have hung in little curls round his neck, just below his ears. He is a tall man, with a big strong-looking body. In spite of the coa.r.s.e clothes he wears, there is a strange dignity about him. You feel something drawing you to him, making you want to know more about him.

You feel somehow as if you were in the presence of some one who is very big, and that you yourself are very small, smaller perhaps than you ever felt in your life. Yet you feel ready to do anything for him, and, at the same time, you believe that, if only you could make him know that you are there, he would be ready to do anything for you.

Even in this wretched den he carries himself with an air of authority, as if he were accustomed to command. Now, at last he is looking up; and we can see his eyes. Most wonderful eyes they are! Eyes that look as if they could pierce through all sorts of disguises, and read the deepest secrets of a man's heart. They are kind eyes too; and look as if they could be extraordinarily tender at times. They are something like a shepherd's eyes, as if they were accustomed to gazing out far and wide in search of strayed sheep and lost lambs. Yet they are also like the eyes of a Judge; thoroughly well able to distinguish right from wrong. It would be terrible to meet those eyes after doing anything the least bit crooked or shabby or untrue. They look as if they would know at the first glance just how much excuses were worth; and what was the truth. No wonder that once, when those eyes fell on a man who was arguing on the wrong side, he felt ashamed all of a sudden and cried out in terror: 'Do not pierce me so with thine eyes! Keep thine eyes off me!' Another time when this same prisoner was reasoning with a crowd of people, who did not agree with him, they all cried out with one accord: 'Look at his eyes, look at his eyes!' And yet another time when he was riding through an angry mob, in a city where men were ready to take his life, they dared not touch him. 'Oh, oh,' they cried, 'see, he s.h.i.+nes! he glisters!'

Then what happened next? We do not want to look at the prisoner in fancy any longer. We want really to know about him: to hear the beginnings and endings of those stories and of many others. And that is exactly what we are going to do. The prisoner is going to tell us his own true story in his own real words. There is no need for our fancy wings any longer. They may shrivel up and drop off unheeded. For that prisoner is GEORGE FOX, and he belongs to English history. He has left the whole story of his life and adventures written in two large folio volumes that may still be seen in London. The pages are so old and the edges have worn so thin in the two hundred and fifty years since they were written, that each page has had to be most carefully framed in strong paper to keep it from getting torn. The ink is faded and brown, and the writing is often crabbed and difficult to read. But it can be read, and it is full of stories. In olden times, probably, the book was bound in a brown leather cover, but now, because it is very old and valuable, it has been clothed with beautiful red leather, on which is stamped in gold letters, the t.i.tle:

GEORGE FOX'S JOURNAL.

Now let us open it at the right place, and, before any of the other stories, let us hear what the writer says about that dismal prison in Scarborough Castle: how long he stayed there, and how he was at last set free.

'One day the governor of Scarborough castle, Sir Jordan Crosland, came to see me. I desired the governor to go into my room and see what a place I had. I had got a little fire made in it, and it was so filled with smoke that when they were in it they could hardly find their way out again.... I told him I was forced to lay out about fifty s.h.i.+llings to stop out the rain, and keep the room from smoking so much. When I had been at that charge and had made it somewhat tolerable, they removed me into a worse room, where I had neither chimney nor fire hearth.'

(This last is the room in the castle cliff that is still called 'George Fox's prison,' where we have been standing in imagination and looking in upon him. We will listen while he describes it again, so as to get accustomed to his rather old-fas.h.i.+oned English.)

'This being to the sea-side and lying much open, the wind drove in the rain forcibly, so that the water came over my bed, and ran about the room, that I was fain to skim it up with a platter. And when my clothes were wet, I had no fire to dry them; so that my body was benumbed with cold, and my fingers swelled, that one was grown as big as two. Though I was at some charge in this room also, yet I could not keep out the wind and rain.... Afterwards I hired a soldier to fetch me water and bread, and something to make a fire of, when I was in a room where a fire could be made. Commonly a threepenny loaf served me three weeks, and sometimes longer, and most of my drink was water, with wormwood steeped or bruised in it.... As to friends I was as a man buried alive, for though many came far to see me, yet few were suffered to come to me.... The officers often threatened that I should be hanged over the wall. Nay, the deputy governor told me once, that the King, knowing that I had a great interest in the people, had sent me thither, that if there should be any stirring in the nation, they should hang me over the wall to keep the people down. A while after they talked much of hanging me. But I told them that if that was what they desired and it was permitted them, I was ready; for I never feared death nor sufferings in my life, but I was known to be an innocent, peaceable man, free from all stirrings and plottings, and one that sought the good of all men. Afterwards, the Governor growing kinder, I spoke to him when he was going to London, and desired him to speak to Esquire Marsh, Sir Francis Cobb, and some others, and let them know how long I had lain in prison, and for what, and he did so.

When he came down again, he told me that Esquire Marsh said he would go a hundred miles barefoot for my liberty, he knew me so well; and several others, he said, spoke well of me. From which time the Governor was very loving to me.

'There were among the prisoners two very bad men, who often sat drinking with the officers and soldiers; and because I would not sit and drink with them, it made them the worse against me. One time when these two prisoners were drunk, one of them (whose name was William Wilkinson, who had been a captain), came in and challenged me to fight with him. I seeing what condition he was in, got out of his way; and next morning, when he was more sober, showed him how unmanly a thing it was in him to challenge a man to fight, whose principle he knew it was not to strike; but if he was stricken on one ear to turn the other. I told him that if he had a mind to fight, he should have challenged some of the soldiers, that could have answered him in his own way. But, however, seeing he had challenged me, I was now come to answer him, with my hands in my pockets: and, reaching my head towards him, "Here," said I, "here is my hair, here are my cheeks, here is my back." With that, he skipped away from me and went into another room, at which the soldiers fell a-laughing; and one of the officers said, "You are a happy man that can bear such things." Thus he was conquered without a blow.

'... After I had lain a prisoner above a year in Scarborough Castle, I sent a letter to the King, in which I gave him an account of my imprisonment, and the bad usage I had received in prison; and also I was informed no man could deliver me but he. After this, John Whitehead being at London, and being acquainted with Esquire Marsh, went to visit him, and spoke to him about me; and he undertook, if John Whitehead would get the state of my case drawn up, to deliver it to the master of requests, Sir John Birkenhead, and endeavour to get a release for me. So John Whitehead ... drew up an account of my imprisonment and sufferings and carried it to Marsh; and he went with it to the master of requests, who procured an order from the King for my release. The substance of this order was that the King, being certainly informed, that I was a man principled against plotting and fighting, and had been ready at all times to discover plots, rather than to make any, therefore his royal pleasure was, that I should be discharged from my imprisonment. As soon as this order was obtained, John Whitehead came to Scarborough with it and delivered it to the Governor; who, upon receipt thereof, gathered the officers together, ... and being satisfied that I was a man of peaceable life, he discharged me freely, and gave me the following pa.s.sport:--

'"Permit the bearer hereof, GEORGE FOX, late a prisoner here, and now discharged by his majesty's order, quietly to pa.s.s about his lawful occasions, without any molestation. Given under my hand at Scarborough Castle, this first day of September 1666.--JORDAN CROSLAND, Governor of Scarborough Castle."

'After I was released, I would have made the Governor a present for his civility and kindness he had of late showed me; but he would not receive anything; saying "Whatever good he could for me and my friends, he would do it, and never do them any hurt." ... He continued loving unto me unto his dying day. The officers also and the soldiers were mightily changed, and became very respectful to me; when they had occasion to speak of me they would say, "HE IS AS STIFF AS A TREE, AND AS PURE AS A BELL; FOR WE COULD NEVER BOW HIM."'

II. 'PURE FOY, MA JOYE'

_'Outwardly there was little resemblance between George Fox and Francis of a.s.sisi, between the young Leicesters.h.i.+re Shepherd of the XVIIth Century and the young Italian merchant of the XIIIth, but they both felt the power of G.o.d and yielded themselves wholly to it: both left father and mother and home: both defied the opinions of their time: both won their way through bitter opposition to solid success: both cast themselves "upon the infinite love of G.o.d": both were most truly surrendered souls; but Francis submitted himself to established authority, Fox only to the spirit of G.o.d speaking in the single soul.'_

_'In solitude and silence Fox found G.o.d and heard Him. He proclaimed that the Kingdom of G.o.d is the Kingdom of a living Spirit Who holds converse with His people.'--BISHOP WESTCOTT._

_'Some place their religion in books, some in images, some in the pomp and splendour of external wors.h.i.+p, but some with illuminated understandings hear what the Holy Spirit speaketh in their hearts'--THOMAS a KEMPIS._

_'Lord, when I look upon mine own life it seems Thou hast led me so carefully, so tenderly, Thou canst have attended to none else; but when I see how wonderfully Thou hast led the world and art leading it, I am amazed that Thou hast had time to attend to such as I.'--AUGUSTINE._

II. 'PURE FOY, MA JOYE'

'He is stiff as a tree and pure as a bell, and we could never bow him.' So spoke the rough soldiers of Scarborough Castle of their prisoner, George Fox, after he had been set at liberty. A splendid thing it was for soldiers to say of a prisoner whom they had held absolutely in their power. But a tree does not grow stiff all at once.

It takes many years for a tiny seedling to grow into a st.u.r.dy oak. A bell has to undergo many processes before it gains its perfect form and pure ringing note. And a whole lifetime of joys and sorrows had been needed to develop the 'stiffness' (or steadfastness, as we should call it now) and purity of character that astonished the soldiers in their prisoner. There will not be much story in this history of George Fox's early days, but it is the foundation-stone on which most of the later stories will be built.

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

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

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

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

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BOYHOOD OF GEORGE FOX]

Less than a mile from the weaver's cottage stood the Church and the Manor House side by side. The churchyard had a wall of solid red bricks, overshadowed by a border of solemn old yew-trees. The Manor House was encircled by a moat on which graceful white swans swam to and fro. For centuries the Purefoy family had been Squires of Drayton village. They had inhabited the Manor House while they were alive, and had been buried in the churchyard close by after they were dead. The present Squire was a certain COLONEL GEORGE PUREFOY. It may have been after him that 'Righteous Christer' called his eldest son George, or it may have been after that other George, 'Saint George for Merrie England,' whose image killing the Dragon was to be seen engraved on each rare golden 'n.o.ble' that found its way to the weaver's home.

Christopher and Mary Fox were both of them possessed of more education than was usual among country people at that time, when reading and writing were still rare accomplishments. 'Righteous Christer' was an important man in the small village. Besides being a weaver, he was also a churchwarden, and was able to sign his own name in bold characters, as may still be seen to-day in the parish registers, where his fellow-churchwarden, being unable to read or write, was only able to sign his name with a cross. Unfortunately this same register, which ought to record the exact day of July 1624 on which little George was baptized here in the old church, no longer mentions him, since, more than a hundred years after his time, the wife of the s.e.xton of Fenny Drayton, running short of paper to cover her jam-pots, must needs lay hands on the valuable Church records and tear out a few priceless pages just here. So, although several other brothers and sisters followed George and came to live in the weaver's cottage during the next few years, we know none of their ages or birthdays, until we come to the record of the baptism of the youngest sister Sarah. Happily her page came last of all, after the s.e.xton's jam was finished, and thus Sarah's name escaped being made into the lid of a jam-pot. But we will hope that the weaver and his wife remembered and kept all their children's birthdays on the right days, even though they are forgotten now. However that may have been, George's parents 'endeavoured to train him up, as they did their other children, in the common way of wors.h.i.+p--his mother especially being eminent for piety: but even from a child he was seen to be of another frame of mind from his brethren, for he was more religious, retired, still and solid, and was also observing beyond his age. His mother, seeing this extraordinary temper and G.o.dliness, which so early did s.h.i.+ne through him, so that he would not meddle with childish games, carried herself indulgent towards him.... Meanwhile he learned to read pretty well, and to write as much as would serve to signify his meaning to others.'

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

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

At that time there was a law obliging everybody to attend Church on Sundays, and as the services lasted for several hours at a time, the weaver's children doubtless had time to look about them, and learned to know the stones of the old church well. When the Squire and his family were at home they sat in the Purefoy Chapel in the North Aisle.

From this Chapel a door in the wall opened on to a path that led straight over the drawbridge across the moat to the Manor House. It must have been interesting for all the village children to watch for the opening and shutting of that door. But up in the chancel there was, and still is, something even more interesting: the big tomb that a certain Mistress Jocosa or Joyce Purefoy had put up to the memory of her husband, who had died in the days of good Queen Bess.

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

'MY FAITH PURE, MY JOY SURE.'

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

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

This was not the only battle story the boy must have known well. A few miles from Fenny Drayton is 'the rising ground of Market Bosworth,'

better known as Bosworth Field. As he grew older George loved to wander over the fields that surrounded his birthplace. He 'must have often pa.s.sed the site of Henry's camp, perhaps may have drunk sometimes at the well at which Richard is said to have quenched his thirst.' But although his home was near this old battlefield, the boy grew up in a peaceful England. Probably no one in Fenny Drayton imagined that in a very few years the smiling English meadows would once more be drenched in blood. George Fox in his country home was brought up to follow country pursuits, and was especially skilful in the management of sheep. He says in his Journal: 'As I grew up, my relations thought to have made me a priest, but others persuaded to the contrary. Whereupon I was put to a man who was a shoemaker by trade, and dealt in wool. He also used grazing and sold cattle; and a great deal went through my hands. While I was with him he was blest, but after I left him, he broke and came to nothing. I never wronged man or woman in all that time.... While I was in that service, I used in my dealings the word "Verily," and it was a common saying among those that knew me, "if George says Verily, there is no altering him."

When boys and rude persons would laugh at me, I let them alone, but people generally had a love to me for my innocence and honesty.

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

'Then at the command of G.o.d, the 9th of the 7th month,[1] 1643, I left my relations, and broke off all familiarity or fellows.h.i.+p with young or old.'

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

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