A Book Of Quaker Saints Part 15

These suggestions had their effect. Possibly the congregation agreed with the speaker. Possibly also, they knew that the little Justice, though short of stature, was of long memory and an ill man to offend.

Moreover, a magistrate's favour is a useful thing to have at all times. Perhaps if they hunted Mr. Justice Sawrey's quarry for him in the daytime, he would be more likely to turn a blind eye the next moonlight night that they were minded to go out snaring other game, with fur and feathers, in the Justice's own park! Anyhow, faces began to grow threatening as the Quaker's discourse proceeded. Presently loud voices were raised. Still the calm tones flowed on unheeding. At length, clenched fists were raised; and, at the sight, the smile on the Justice's face visibly broadened. Nodding his head emphatically, he seemed to be saying, 'On, men, on!' till at length, like sparks fanned by a bellows, the congregation's ill-humour suddenly burst into a flame of rage. When at length rough hands fell upon the Quaker's shoulders and set all his alchemy b.u.t.tons a-jingling, Mr. Justice Sawrey leaned against the back of his high wooden pew, crossed his legs complacently, and laughed long and loud at the joke. The crowd took this as a sign that they might do as they chose. They fell upon Fox, knocked him down, and finally trampled upon him, under the Justice's own eyes. The uproar became so great that the quieter members of the congregation were terrified, 'and the people fell over their seats for fear.'

At length the Justice bethought himself that such behaviour as this in a church was quite illegal, since a man had been sentenced, before now, to lose his hand as a punishment for even striking his neighbour within consecrated walls. He began to feel uneasily that even the excellent sport of Quaker-baiting might be carried too far inside the Church. He came forward, therefore, and without difficulty rescued George Fox from the hands of his tormentors. But he had not finished with the Quaker yet. Leading him outside the Church, he there formally handed him over to the constables, saying, 'Take the fellow.

Thrash him soundly and turn him out of the town,' adding, perhaps, under his breath, 'and teach him to behave with greater respect hereafter to a Justice of the Peace!'

George Fox describes in his own words what happened next. 'They led me,' says the Journal, 'about a quarter of a mile, some taking hold of my collar, and some by the arms and shoulders, and shook and dragged me, and some got hedge-stakes and holme bushes and other staffs. And many friendly people that was come to the market, and had come into the steeple-house to hear me, many of them they knocked down and broke their heads also, and the blood ran down several people so as I never saw the like in my life, as I looked at them when they were dragging me along. And Judge Fell's son, running after me to see what they would do to me, they threw him into a ditch of water and cried, "Knock the teeth out of his head!"'

Once well away from the town, apparently, the constables were content to let their prisoner go, knowing that they might trust their fellow-townsmen to finish the job with right good will. The mob yelled with joy to find their prey in their hands at last. With one accord they fell upon Fox, and endeavoured to pull him down, much as, at the huntsman's signal, a pack of hounds sets upon his four-footed namesake with a bushy tail. The constables and officers, too, continued to a.s.sist. Giving him some final blows with willow-rods they thrust Fox 'amid the rude mult.i.tude, and they then fell upon me as aforesaid with their stakes and clubs and beat me on the head and arms and shoulders, until at last,' their victim says, 'they mazed me, and I fell down upon the wet common.'

The crowd had won! George Fox was down at last! He lay, bruised and fainting, on the wet moss of the common on the far side of the town.

Yes, there he lay for a few moments, stunned, bruised, bleeding, beaten nigh to death. Only for a few moments, no longer. Very soon his consciousness returned. Finding himself helpless on the watery common with the savage mob glowering over him, he says, 'I lay a little still without attempting to rise. Then suddenly the power of the Lord sprang through me, and the eternal refreshings revived me, so that I stood up again in the eternal power of G.o.d, and stretched out my arms among them all and said with a loud voice: "Strike again! Here are my arms, my head, my cheeks!"'

Whatever would he do next? What sort of a man was this? The rough fellows in the circle around him insensibly drew back a little, and looked in each other's faces with surprise, as they tried to read the riddle of this disconcerting behaviour. The Quaker would not show fight! He was actually giving them leave to set upon him and beat him again! All in a minute, what had hitherto seemed like rare sport began to be rather poor fun.

'There's no sense in thrashing a man who doesn't strike back! Better leave the fellow alone!' some of the more decent-minded whispered to each other in undertones, and then slunk away ashamed. Only one man, a mason, well known as the bully of the town, knew no shame.

'Strike again, sayest thou, Quaker?' he thundered. 'Hast had none but soft blows. .h.i.therto? Faith then, I will strike in good earnest this time.' So saying, the mason brought a thick wooden rule that he was carrying down on the outstretched hand before him, with a savage blow that might have felled an ox. After the first shock of agonising pain George Fox lost all feeling from his finger-tips right up to his shoulder. When he tried to draw the wounded hand back to his side he could not do it. The paralysed nerves refused to carry the message of the brain.

'The mason hath made a good job of it this time,' jeered a mocking voice from the crowd. 'The Quaker hath lost the use of his right hand for ever.' For ever! Terrible words. George Fox was but a young man still. Was he indeed to go through life maimed, without the use of his right hand? The bravest man might have shrunk from such a prospect; but George Fox did not shrink, because he did not happen to be thinking of himself at all. His hand was not his own. Not it alone but his whole body also had been given, long ago, to the service of his Master. They belonged to Him. Therefore if that Master should need the right hand of His servant to be used in His service, His Power could be trusted to make it whole.

Thus Fox trusted, and not in vain; since all the while, no thoughts of vengeance or hatred to those who had injured him were able to find even a moment's lodging in his heart.

'So as the people cried out, "he hath spoiled his hand for ever having any use of it more," I LOOKED AT IT IN THE LOVE OF G.o.d AND I WAS IN THE LOVE OF G.o.d TO ALL THEM THAT HAD PERSECUTED ME. AND AFTER A WHILE THE LORD'S POWER SPRANG THROUGH MY HAND AND ARM AND THROUGH ME, THAT IN A MINUTE I RECOVERED MY HAND AND ARM AND STRENGTH IN THE FACE AND SIGHT OF THEM ALL.'

This miracle, as it seemed to them, overawed the rough mob for a moment. But some of the greedier spirits saw a chance of making a good thing out of the afternoon's work for themselves. They came to Fox and said if he would give them some money they would defend him from the others, and he should go free. But Fox would not hear of such a thing.

He 'was moved of the Lord to declare unto them the word of life, and how they were more like Jews and heathens and not like Christians.'

Thus, instead of thankfully slinking away and disappearing up the hill by a by-path to the friendly shelter of Swarthmoor, Fox strode boldly back into the centre of the town of Ulverston with his persecutors, like a crowd of whipped dogs, following him at his heels. Yet still they snarled and showed their teeth at times, as if to say, they would have him yet if they dared. Right into Ulverston market-place he came, and a stranger sight the old grey town, with its thatched roofs and timbered houses, had surely never seen. In the middle of the market-place the one other courageous man in the town came up to him.

This was a soldier, carrying a sword.

'Sir,' said this gallant gentleman, as he met the bruised and bleeding Quaker, 'I am ashamed that you, a stranger, should have been thus ill-treated and abused, FOR YOU ARE A MAN, SIR,' said he. Fox nodded, and a smile like wintry sunshine stole over his worn face. Silently he held out his hand. The soldier grasped it. 'In truth, I am grieved,'

he repeated, 'grieved and ashamed that you should have been treated like this at Ulverston. Gladly will I a.s.sist you myself as far as I can against these cowards, who are not ashamed to set upon an unarmed man, forty to one, and drag him down.'

'No matter for that, Friend,' said Fox, 'they have no power to harm me, for the Lord's power is over all.' With these words he turned and crossed the crowded market-place again, on his way to leave the town, and not one of the people dared to touch him.

But, as everyone prefers both to be defended himself and to defend others with those weapons in which he himself puts most trust, the soldier very naturally followed Fox, in case 'the Lord's power' might also need the a.s.sistance of his trusty sword.

The mob, seeing Fox well protected, turned, like the cowards they were, and fell upon the other 'friendly people' who were standing defenceless in the market-place and beat them instead. Their meanness enraged the soldier. Leaving Fox, he turned and ran upon the mob in his turn, his naked rapier shining in his hand.

'My trusty sword shall teach these cravens a lesson at last,' he thought. Quick as he was, Fox was quicker. He, too, had turned at the noise, and seeing his defender running at the crowd, and the sunshine dancing down the steel blade as it gleamed in the air, he also ran, and dashed up the soldier's weapon before it had time to descend. Then taking firm hold of the man's right hand, sword and all, 'Thou must put up thy sword, Friend,' he commanded, 'if thou wilt come along with me.' Half sulkily, and wholly disappointed, the soldier, in spite of himself, obeyed. But he insisted on accompanying Fox to the outskirts of the town. 'You will be safe now, Sir,' he said, and sweeping his plumed hat respectfully on the ground, as he bowed low to his new friend, the two parted.

Nevertheless, not many days thereafter this very gallant gentleman paid for his chivalrous conduct. No less than seven men fell upon him at once, and beat him cruelly 'for daring to take the Quaker's part.'

'For it was the custom of this country to run twenty or forty people upon one man,' adds the Journal, with quiet scorn. 'And they fell so upon Friends in many places, that they could hardly pa.s.s the high ways, stoning and beating and breaking their heads.'

But of the punishment in store for his defender, Fox was happily ignorant that hot afternoon of the riot, as he followed the peaceful brook through its sheltered glen, and so came up again at last, after his rough handling, to friendly Swarthmoor, where young George Fell, escaped from his persecutors and the miry ditch, had arrived before him. 'And there they were, dressing the heads and hands of Friends and friendly people that were broken that day by the professors and hearers of Priest Lampitt,' writes Fox.

'And my body and arms were yellow, black and blue with the blows and bruises I received among them that day.'

FOOTNOTES:

[12] Remember always that by 'priest' George Fox only means a man of any form of religion who was paid for preaching. Lampitt was probably an Independent. 'Professors,' as we have already seen, are the people usually called 'Puritans, who 'professed' or made a great show of being very religious.'

XIII. MAGNANIMITY

_'Magnanimity ... includes all that belongs to a great soul. A high and mighty Courage, an invincible Patience, an immovable Grandeur; which is above the reach of Injuries; a high and lofty Spirit allayed with the sweetness of Courtesy and Respect: a deep and stable Resolution founded on Humilitie without any Baseness ...

a generous confidence, and a great inclination to Heroical deeds; all these conspire to compleat it, with a severe and mighty expectation of Bliss incomprehensible...._

_'A magnanimous soul is always awake. The whole globe of the Earth is but a nutsh.e.l.l in comparison with its enjoyments. The Sun is its Lamp, the Sea its Fishpond, the Stars its Jewels, Men, Angels, its attendance, and G.o.d alone its sovereign delight and supreme complacency.... Nothing is great if compared with a Magnanimous soul but the Sovereign Lord of all the Worlds.'--REV. THOMAS TRAHERNE (A Contemporary of G. Fox)._

_'They threw stones upon me that were so great, that I did admire they did not kill us; but so mighty was the power of the Lord, that they were as a nut or a bean to my thinking.'--THOMAS BRIGGS, 1685._

XIII. MAGNANIMITY

Beloved Swarthmoor! Dear home, where kind hearts abode, where gentle faces and tender hands were ever ready to welcome and bind up the wounds, both visible and invisible, of any persecuted guest in those troubled times. Surely, after his terrible experiences on the day of the riot at Ulverston, George Fox would yield to the entreaties of his entertainers, and allow himself to be persuaded to rest in peace under the shadow of the Swarthmoor yew-trees, until the bloodthirsty fury against all who bore the name of Quaker, and against himself in particular, should have somewhat lessened in the neighbourhood? Far from it. To 'Flee from Storms' was never this strong man's way.[13]

Gentle reeds and delicate gra.s.ses may bow as the storm-wind rushes over them. The st.u.r.dy oak-tree, with its tough roots grappling firmly underground, stubbornly faces the blast. George Fox, 'ever Stiff as a Tree,' by the admission even of his enemies, barely waited for his 'yellow, black and blue' bruises to disappear before he came forth again to encounter his foes. Certain priests had however taken advantage of this short enforced absence to 'put about a prophecy'

that he had disappeared for good, and 'that within a year all these Quakers would be utterly put down.' Great, therefore, must have been their chagrin to hear, only a short fortnight after the Lecture Day at Ulverston, that the hated 'Man in Leather Breeches' was off once more on his dangerous career.

Fox's companion on this journey was that same James Nayler who had followed him on his first visit to Swarthmoor, a few weeks previously.

Nayler was one of the most brilliantly gifted of all those early comrades of George Fox, who were hereafter to earn the name of 'the Valiant Sixty.' Clouds and sorrows were to separate the two friends in years to come, but at this time they were united in heart and soul, both alike given up to the joyful service of 'Publishing Truth.' The object of their journey was to visit another recent convert, James Lancaster by name, in his home on the Island of Walney that lies off the Furness coast.

On the way thither the travellers spent one night at a small town on the mainland called c.o.c.kan. Here, as usual, they held a meeting with the inhabitants of the place, in order to proclaim the message that possessed them. Their words had already convinced one of their hearers, and more converts to the Truth might have followed, when suddenly, at a low window of the hall where they were a.s.sembled, a man's figure appeared, threatening the audience with a loaded pistol which he carried in his hand. As this pistol was pointed, first at one and then at another of George Fox's listeners, all the terrified people sprang to their feet and rushed through the doors of the hall as fast as their legs could carry them. Their alarm was natural; probably most, if not all of them, had seen fire-arms used in grim earnest before this, for the period of the Civil Wars was too recent to have faded from anyone's memory.

'I am not after you, ye timid sheep,' shouted the man with the pistol as the scared people fled past him. 'It is that Deceiver who is leading you all astray that I have to do with. Come out and meet me, George Fox,' he shouted, 'if you call yourself a Man.'

There was no need to ask twice. 'Here I am, Friend,' answered a quiet voice, as the well-known figure, in its wide white hat, long coat, leather breeches and doublet, and girdle with alchemy b.u.t.tons, appeared standing in the doorway. Then, pa.s.sing calmly through it, George Fox drew up scarce three paces from his a.s.sailant--his body making a large target at close range that it would be impossible to miss. The frightened people paused in their flight to watch. Were they going to see the Quaker slain? The stranger raised his pistol; he aimed carefully. Not a muscle of Fox's countenance quivered. Not an eyelash moved. The trigger snapped....

Nothing happened! The pistol did not go off. As if by a miracle the Quaker was saved.

Seeing this wonderful escape of their leader, some of the other men's courage returned. They rushed back to a.s.sist him. They threw themselves upon his a.s.sailant and wrenched the pistol from his hand, vowing he should do no further mischief. Fox, seeing in his adversary, not an enemy who had just sought his life, but a fellow-man with a 'Seed of G.o.d' hidden somewhere within him and therefore a possible soul to be won, was 'moved in the Lord's power to speak to him; and he was struck with the Lord's power' (small wonder!) 'so that he went and hid himself in a cellar and trembled for fear.

'And so the Lord's power came over them all, though there was a great rage in the country.'

The Journal continues (but it was written many years later, remember, when the account of what had happened could not bring anyone into trouble): 'And ye next morning I went over in a boat to James Lancaster's, and as soon as I came to land there rushed out about forty men, with staffs, clubs, and fishing-poles, and fell upon me with them, beating, punching, and thrust me backwards into the sea.

And when they had thrust me almost into the sea, I stood up and went into the middle of them again, but they all laid on me again and knocked me down and mazed me. And when I was down and came to myself, I looked up and saw James Lancaster's wife throwing stones at my face, and her husband lying over me, to keep the stones and blows off me.

For the people had persuaded James's wife that I had bewitched her husband, and had promised her that if she would let them know when I came hither they would be my death.

'So at last I got up in the power of G.o.d over them all, and they beat me down into the boat. And so James Lancaster came into the boat to me and so he set me over the water.