A Book Of Quaker Saints Part 21

'Not I,' returned the pastor, moodily, as he shuffled away, like a man ill at ease with himself.

Little James, from his perch on the parapet, had drunk in greedily every word of this conversation. Directly the bridge was clear he crept down and followed the deacon like a shadow. They pa.s.sed over the silver Eden and up the main street of the city, paved with rough, uneven stones, and with an open sewer flowing through the centre of it. Right across the busy market-place they pa.s.sed, before the deacon halted beneath the castle walls.

Full of noise and hubbub was Carlisle city that day; yet, as the two entered the courtyard of the castle, James was aware of another sound, rising clear above the tumult of the town--strains of music, surely, that came from a fiddle. As they stepped under the inner gateway and approached the Norman Keep, the fiddler himself came in sight playing with might and main, under a barred window about six feet from the ground. By the fiddler's side, urging him on, was a huge, burly man with a red face. Whenever the fiddler showed signs of weariness the man beside him raising a large tankard of ale to his lips would force him to drink of it, saying, 'Play up, man! Play up!'

The thin, clear strains of the fiddle rose up steadily towards the barred window, but, above them, James caught another sound that floated yet more steadily out through the bars: the firm, full tones of a deep ba.s.s voice within, singing loud and strong.

Though he could not see the singer, something in the song thrilled James through and through. Forgetting his weariness he knew that he was near his journey's end at last. As he listened, he noticed a handful of people, listening also, under the barred window.

Loud jeers arose: 'Play up, Fiddler!' 'Sing on, Quaker!' or even, 'Ply him with more ale, Gaoler: the prisoner is the better musician!'

At these cries the fat man's countenance grew ever more enraged. He looked savage and huge, 'like a bear-ward,' a man more accustomed to deal with bears than with human beings. Finally, in his wrath, he turned the now empty tankard upon the crowd and bespattered them with the last drops of the ale, and then called l.u.s.tily for more, with which he plied the fiddler anew. So the contest continued, but at last, the ale perhaps taking effect, the fiddler's head dropped, his bow swept the strings more wearily, while the strong notes inside the dungeon grew ever more firm and loud. The gaoler seeing, or rather hearing, himself worsted, caught the bow from the fiddler's hand and cracked it over his skull. The fiddler, seizing this chance to escape, leapt to his feet and dashed across the courtyard, followed by the gaoler and the populace in full chase. Even the sombre Baptist deacon gathered up the skirts of his long coat and bestirred his lean legs.

The singing ceased. A face appeared at the window: only for an instant: but one glance was enough for James.

Timidly he approached the window, but he had only taken two steps towards it when he found himself firmly elbowed off the pavement and pushed into the gutter. Someone else also had been watching for the crowd to disperse, in order to have a chance of speaking with the prisoner. The new-comer was a portly lady in a satin gown, a much grander person than James had expected to find in the near neighbourhood of a dungeon. She carried a large, covered basket, and, as soon as the way was clear, she set it down on the pavement and began to take out the contents carefully: bread and salt, beef and elecampane ale. Without looking up from her work she called to the unseen figure at the window above her head: 'So thou hast stopped their vain sounds at length with thy singing?'

'Aye,' answered the deep voice from within. 'Thou mayest safely approach the window now, for the gaoler hath departed. After he had beaten thee and the other Friends with his great cudgel, next he was moved to beat me also, through the window, did I but come near to it to get my meat. And as he struck me I was moved to sing in the Lord's power, and that made him rage the more, whereat he fetched the fiddler, saying he would soon drown my noise if I would not cease.'

'Eat now, Dear Heart,' the woman interrupted, 'whilst thou hast the chance.' So saying, she handed some of the dishes up to the prisoner, standing herself on tiptoe beneath the prison window in order to reach his hand stretched out through the bars.

Here James saw his chance.

'Madam,' he cried, 'let me hand the meat up to you.'

The lady looked down and saw the worn, thin face. Perhaps she thought the boy looked hungry enough to need the food himself, but something in his eager glance touched her, and when he added, 'For I have come one hundred and fifty miles to see GEORGE FOX,' her kind heart was won.

'Nay, then, thou hast a better right to help him even than I,' she said, 'though I am his very good friend and Colonel Benson's wife.

Thou shall hand up the dishes to me, and when our friend is satisfied, thou and I will finish what remains, for in the Lord's power I am moved to eat no meat at my own house, but to share all my sustenance with His faithful servant who lies within this noisome gaol.'

'Madam,' said the boy, speaking with the concentrated intensity of weeks of suppressed longing, 'for the food, it is no matter, though I am much beholden to you. I hunger after but one thing. Bring me within the gaol where I may speak with him face to face. There is that, that I have come afoot a hundred miles to ask him.

'Bring me to him, speedily I pray you, for, though even unseen I love him,

'I MUST SEE GEORGE FOX.'

XVIII. THE FIRST QUAKER MARTYR

(_From another point of view._)

_Extracts from the Diary of the Rev. Ralph Josselin, Vicar of Earls Colne, Ess.e.x._

_1655.--'Preacht at Gaines Coln, the Quakers' nest, but no disturbance. G.o.d hath raised up my heart not to fear but willing to bear and to make opposition to their ways, in defence of truth.'_

_Ap. 11, 1656.--'Heard this morning that James Parnell, the father of the Quakers in these parts, having undertaken to fast forty days and forty nights was in the morning found dead. He was by jury found guilty of his own death and buried in the Castle yard.'_

_'Heard and true that Turner's daughter was distract in the Quaking business.'_

_'Sad are the fits at c.o.xall, like the pow-wowing among the Indians.'_

_1660.--'The Quakers, after a stop and a silence, seem to be swarming and increased, and why, Lord thou only knowest!'_

_'So there is no obtaining of Life but through Death, nor no obtaining the Crown but through the Cross.'--JAMES PARNELL._

XVIII. THE FIRST QUAKER MARTYR

How Mrs. Benson managed it, there is no record. Perhaps she hardly knew herself! But she was not a woman to be easily turned aside from her purpose, and her husband, Colonel Gervase Benson, had been one of the 'considerable people' in the County before he had turned Quaker and 'downed those things.' Even after the change, it may be that prison doors were more easily unlocked by certain little golden and silver keys in those days, than they are in our own.

Anyway, somehow or other, the interview was arranged. 'Little James'

found his desire fulfilled at last. When he pa.s.sed into the stifling, crowded prison den, where human beings were herded together like beasts, he never heeded the horrible stench or the crawling vermin that abounded everywhere. Rather, he felt as if he were entering the palace of a king. He paid no attention to the crowd of savage figures all around him. He saw nothing, knew nothing, felt nothing, until at last he found that his hand was lying in the grasp of a stronger, firmer hand, that held it, and would not let it go. Then, indeed, for the first time he looked up, and knew that his long journey was ended, as he met the penetrating gaze of George Fox.

'Keep thine eyes off me, they pierce me,' the Baptist Deacon had cried, a few weeks before, in that same city. As James looked up, he too felt for the first time the piercing power of those eyes, but to him it brought no terror, only joy, as he yielded himself wholly to his teacher's scrutiny. In silence the two stood, reading each the other's soul. James felt, instinctively, that his new friend knew and understood everything that had happened to him, all his life long; that there was no need to tell him anything, or to explain anything.

Of an older friendship between two men it was written, 'Thy love to me was wonderful, pa.s.sing the love of women.' Thus it proved once more in that crowded dungeon. No details remain of the interview; no record of what James said, or what George said. No one else could have reported what pa.s.sed between them, and, though each of them has left a mention of their first meeting, the silence remains unbroken.

The Journal says merely: 'While I was in ye dungeon at Carlisle, a little boy, one James Parnell, about fifteen years old, came to me, and he was convinced and came to be a very fine minister and turned many to Christ.'

The boy's own account is shorter still. He does not even mention George Fox by name. 'I was called for,' he says, 'to visit some friends in the North part of England, with whom I had union before I saw their faces, and afterwards I returned to my outward dwelling-place.'

His 'outward dwelling-place': the lad's frail body might tramp back along the weary miles to Retford; his spirit remained in the North, freely imprisoned with his friend.

'George' and 'James' were brothers in heart, ever after that short interview in Carlisle Gaol: united in one inseparable purpose. While George was confined, James, the free brother, must carry forward George's work. Triumphantly he did it. By the following year he had earned his place right well among the 'Valiant Sixty' who were then sent forth, 'East and West and South and North,' to 'Publish Truth.'

The Eastern Counties, hitherto almost unbroken ground, fell to James's share. a.s.sisted by two other 'Valiants,' Richard Hubberthorne and George Whitehead, the seed was scattered throughout the length and breadth of East Anglia. Within three short years 'gallant Meetings'

were already gathered and settled everywhere.

James Parnell was the first Quaker preacher to enter the city of Colchester, which was soon to rank third among the strongholds of Quakerism. This boy of eighteen, still so small and delicate in appearance that his enemies taunted him with the name of 'little Quaking lad,' has left an account of one of his first crowded days of work in that city. In the morning, he says, he received any of the townspeople who were minded to come and ask him questions at his lodgings. He was a guest, at the time, of a weaver named Thomas Shortland, who, with his wife Ann, had been convinced shortly before, by their guest's ministry. In adversity also they were soon to prove themselves tried and faithful friends.

Later, that same Sunday morning (4th July 1655), James went down the High Street to Saint Nicholas' Church, and, when the sermon was ended, preached to the people in his turn.

In the afternoon 'he addressed a very great meeting of about a thousand people, in John Furly's yard, he being mounted above the crowd and speaking out of a hay-chamber window.' Still later, that same day, he not only carried on a discussion with 'the town-lecturer and another priest,' he, the boy of eighteen, but also 'appeared in the evening at a previously advertised meeting held in the schoolroom for the children of the French and Flemish weaver refugees in Colchester, who were being at this time hospitably entertained in John Furly's house.'[28]

George Fox says, 'many hundreds of people were convinced by the words and labours of this young minister.' But, far better than preaching to other people, he had by this time learned to rule his own spirit.

Once, as he was coming out of the 'Steeple-house of Colchester, called Nicholas,' one person in particular struck him with a great staff and said to him, 'Take that for Jesus Christ's sake,' to whom James Parnell meekly replied, 'Friend, I do receive it for Jesus Christ's sake.'

The journey his soul had travelled from the time, only three short years before, when he had described his neighbours as 'the heathen round about,' until the day that he could give such an answer was perhaps a longer one really than all the weary miles he had traversed between Retford and far Carlisle.

The two friends, George and James, had one short happy time of service together, both of them free. After that they parted. Then, all too soon it was George's turn to visit James, now himself in prison at Colchester Castle, an even more terrible prison than Carlisle, where only death could open the doors and set the weary prisoner free.

George's record of his visit to his friend is short and grim. 'As I went through Colchester,' he says, 'I went to visit James Parnell in prison, but the cruel gaoler would hardly let us come in or stay with him, and there the gaoler's wife threatened to have his blood, and there they did destroy him.'