Fox's Book of Martyrs Part 46

The like horrid barbarities with those we have particularized, were practised on the wretched protestants in almost all parts of the kingdom; and, when an estimate was afterward made of the number who were sacrificed to gratify the diabolical souls of the papists, it amounted to one hundred and fifty thousand. But it now remains that we proceed to the particulars that followed.

These desperate wretches, flushed and grown insolent with success, (though by methods attended with such excessive barbarities as perhaps not to be equalled) soon got possession of the castle of Newry, where the king's stores and ammunition were lodged; and, with as little difficulty, made themselves masters of Dundalk. They afterward took the town of Ardee, where they murdered all the protestants, and then proceeded to Drogheda. The garrison of Drogheda was in no condition to sustain a siege, notwithstanding which, as often as the Irish renewed their attacks they were vigorously repulsed by a very unequal number of the king's forces, and a few faithful protestant citizens under sir Henry Tichborne, the governor, a.s.sisted by the lord viscount Moore. The siege of Drogheda began on the 30th of November, 1641, and held till the 4th of March, 1642, when sir Phelim O'Neal, and the Irish miscreants under him were forced to retire.

In the mean time ten thousand troops were sent from Scotland to the remaining protestants in Ireland, which being properly divided in the most capital parts of the kingdom, happily eclipsed the power of the Irish savages; and the protestants for a time lived in tranquility.

In the reign of king James II. they were again interrupted, for in a parliament held at Dublin in the year 1689, great numbers of the protestant n.o.bility, clergy, and gentry of Ireland, were attainted of high treason. The government of the kingdom was, at that time, invested in the earl of Tyrconnel, a bigoted papist, and an inveterate enemy to the protestants. By his orders they were again persecuted in various parts of the kingdom. The revenues of the city of Dublin were seized, and most of the churches converted into prisons. And had it not been for the resolution and uncommon bravery of the garrisons in the city of Londonderry, and the town of Inniskillin, there had not one place remained for refuge to the distressed protestants in the whole kingdom; but all must have been given up to king James, and to the furious popish party that governed him.

The remarkable siege of Londonderry was opened on the 18th of April, 1689, by twenty thousand papists, the flower of the Irish army. The city was not properly circ.u.mstanced to sustain a siege, the defenders consisting of a body of raw undisciplined protestants, who had fled thither for shelter, and half a regiment of lord Mountjoy's disciplined soldiers, with the princ.i.p.al part of the inhabitants, making in all only seven thousand three hundred and sixty-one fighting men.

The besieged hoped, at first, that their stores of corn, and other necessaries, would be sufficient; but by the continuance of the siege their wants increased; and these became at last so heavy, that for a considerable time before the siege was raised, a pint of coa.r.s.e barley, a small quant.i.ty of greens, a few spoonfuls of starch, with a very moderate proportion of horse flesh, were reckoned a week's provision for a soldier. And they were, at length, reduced to such extremities, that they ate dogs, cats, and mice.

Their miseries increasing with the siege, many, through mere hunger and want, pined and languished away, or fell dead in the streets. And it is remarkable, that when their long expected succours arrived from England, they were upon the point of being reduced to this alternative, either to preserve their existence by eating each other, or attempting to fight their way through the Irish, which must have infallibly produced their destruction.

These succours were most happily brought by the ship Mountjoy of Derry, and the Phoenix of Colerain, at which time they had only nine lean horses left with a pint of meal to each man. By hunger, and the fatigues of war, their seven thousand three hundred and sixty-one fighting men, were reduced to four thousand three hundred, one-fourth part of whom were rendered unserviceable.

As the calamities of the besieged were great, so likewise were the terrors and sufferings of their protestant friends and relations; all of whom (even women and children) were forcibly driven from the country thirty miles round, and inhumanly reduced to the sad necessity of continuing some days and nights without food or covering, before the walls of the town; and were thus exposed to the continual fire both of the Irish army from without, and the shot of their friends from within.

But the succours from England happily arriving put an end to their affliction; and the siege was raised on the 31st of July, having been continued upwards of three months.

The day before the siege of Londonderry was raised, the Inniskillers engaged a body of six thousand Irish Roman catholics, at Newton, Butler, or Crown-Castle, of whom near five thousand were slain. This, with the defeat at Londonderry, dispirited the papists, and they gave up all farther attempts to persecute the protestants.

The year following, viz. 1690; the Irish took up arms in favour of the abdicated prince, king James II. but they were totally defeated by his successor king William the Third. That monarch, before he left the country, reduced them to a state of subjection, in which they have ever since continued; and it is to be hoped will so remain as long as time shall be.

By a report made in Ireland, in the year 1731, it appeared that a great number of ecclesiastics had, in defiance of the laws, flocked into that kingdom: that several convents had been opened by jesuits, monks, and friars; that many new and pompous ma.s.s-houses had been erected in some of the most conspicuous parts of their great cities, where there had not been any before; and that such swarms of vagrant, immoral Romish priests had appeared, that the very papists themselves considered them as a burthen.

But notwithstanding all this, the protestant interest at present stands upon a much stronger basis than it did a century ago. The Irish, who formerly led an unsettled and roving life, in the woods, bogs, and mountains, and lived on the depredation of their neighbours, they who, in the morning seized the prey, and at night divided the spoil, have, for many years past, become quiet and civilized. They taste the sweets of English society, and the advantages of civil government. They trade in our cities, and are employed in our manufactories. They are received also into English families; and treated with great humanity by the protestants.

The heads of their clans, and the chiefs of the great Irish families, who cruelly oppressed and tyrannized over their va.s.sals, are now dwindled in a great measure to nothing; and most of the ancient popish n.o.bility and gentry of Ireland have renounced the Romish religion.

It is also to be hoped, that inestimable benefits will arise from the establishment of protestant schools in various parts of the kingdom, in which the children of the Roman catholics are instructed in religion and reading, whereby the mist of ignorance is dispelled from their eyes, which was the great source of the cruel transactions that have taken place, at different periods, in that kingdom.

In order to preserve the protestant interest in Ireland upon a solid basis, it behooves all in whom that power is invested, to discharge it with the strictest a.s.siduity and attention; for should it once again lose ground, there is no doubt but the papists would take those advantages they have hitherto done, and thousands might yet fall victims to their malicious bigotry.

FOOTNOTES:

[C] Although Garnet was convicted for this horrible crime, yet the bigoted papists were so besotted as to look upon him as an object of devotion; they fancied that miracles were wrought by his blood; and regarded him as a martyr! Such is the deadening and perverting influence of popery.

[D] The king of England was at that time called _highness_, not _majesty_, as at present.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE RISE, PROGRESS, PERSECUTIONS, AND SUFFERINGS OF THE QUAKERS.

In treating of these people in a historical manner, we are obliged to have recourse to much tenderness. That they differ from the generality of protestants in some of the capital points of religion cannot be denied, and yet, as protestant dissenters, they are included under the description of the toleration act. It is not our business to inquire whether people of similar sentiments had any existence in the primitive ages of Christianity: perhaps, in some respects, they had not, but we are to write of them not as what they were, but what they now are. That they have been treated by several writers in a very contemptuous manner, is certain; that they did not deserve such treatment, is equally certain.

The appellation _Quakers_, was bestowed upon them as a term of reproach, in consequence of their apparent convulsions which they laboured under when they delivered their discourses, because they imagined they were the effect of divine inspiration.

It is not our business, at present, to inquire whether the sentiments of these people are agreeable to the gospel, but this much is certain, that the first leader of them, as a separate body, was a man of obscure birth, who had his first existence in Leicestershire, about the year 1624. In speaking of this man we shall deliver our own sentiments in a historical manner, and joining these to what have been said by the Friends themselves, we shall endeavour to furnish out a complete narrative.

He was descended of honest and respected parents, who brought him up in the national religion: but from a child he appeared religious, still, solid, and observing, beyond his years, and uncommonly knowing in divine things. He was brought up to husbandry, and other country business, and was particularly inclined to the solitary occupation of a shepherd; "an employment," says our author, "that very well suited his mind in several respects, both for its innocency and solitude; and was a just emblem of his after ministry and service." In the year 1646, he entirely forsook the national church, in whose tenets he had been brought up, as before observed; and in 1647, he travelled into Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, without any set purpose of visiting particular places, but in a solitary manner he walked through several towns and villages, which way soever his mind turned. "He fasted much," said Sewell, "and walked often in retired places, with no other companion than his Bible." "He visited the most retired and religious people in those parts," says Penn, "and some there were, short of few, if any, in this nation, who waited for the consolation of Israel night and day; as Zacharias, Anna, and Simeon, did of old time." To these he was sent, and these he sought out in the neighbouring counties, and among them he sojourned till his more ample ministry came upon him. At this time he taught, and was an example of silence, endeavouring to bring them from self-performances; testifying of, and turning them to the light of Christ within them, and encouraging them to wait in patience, and to feel the power of it to stir in their hearts, that their knowledge and worship of G.o.d might stand in the power of an endless life which was to be found in the light, as it was obeyed in the manifestation of it in man: for in the word was life, and that life is the light of men. Life in the word, light in men; and life in men too, as the light is obeyed; the children of the light living by the life of the word, by which the word begets them again to G.o.d, which is the generation and new birth, without which there is no coming into the kingdom of G.o.d, and to which whoever comes is greater than John: that is, than John's dispensation, which was not that of the kingdom, but the consummation of the legal, and forerunning of the gospel times, the time of the kingdom. Accordingly several meetings were gathering in those parts; and thus his time was employed for some years.

In the year 1652, "he had a visitation of the great work of G.o.d in the earth, and of the way that he was to go forth, in a public ministry, to begin it." He directed his course northward, "and in every place where he came, if not before he came to it, he had his particular exercise and service shown to him, so that the Lord was his leader indeed." He made great numbers of converts to his opinions, and many pious and good men joined him in his ministry. These were drawn forth especially to visit the public a.s.semblies to reprove, reform, and exhort them; sometimes in markets, fairs, streets, and by the highway-side, "calling people to repentance, and to return to the Lord, with their hearts as well as their mouths; directing them to the light of Christ within them, to see, examine, and to consider their ways by, and to eschew the evil, and to do the good and acceptable will of G.o.d."

They were not without opposition in the work they imagined themselves called to, being often set in the stocks, stoned, beaten, whipped and imprisoned, though, as our author observes, honest men of good report, that had left wives, children, houses, and lands, to visit them with a living call to repentance. But these coercive methods rather forwarded than abated their zeal, and in those parts they brought over many proselytes, and amongst them several magistrates, and others of the better sort. They apprehended the Lord had forbidden them to pull off their hats to any one, high or low, and required them to speak to the people, without distinction, in the language of thou and thee. They scrupled bidding people good-morrow, or good-night, nor might they bend the knee to any one, even in supreme authority. Both men and woman went in a plain and simple dress, different from the fashion of the times.

They neither gave nor accepted any t.i.tles of respect or honour, nor would they call any man master on earth. Several texts of scripture they quoted in defence of these singularities; such as, Swear not at all. How can ye believe who receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour which comes from G.o.d only? &c. &c. They placed the basis of religion in an inward light, and an extraordinary impulse of the Holy Spirit.

In 1654, their first separate meeting in London was held in the house of Robert Dring, in Watling-street, for by that time they spread themselves into all parts of the kingdom, and had in many places set up meetings or a.s.semblies, particularly in Lancashire, and the adjacent parts, but they were still exposed to great persecutions and trials of every kind. One of them in a letter to the protector, Oliver Cromwell, represents, though there are no penal laws in force obliging men to comply with the established religion, yet the Quakers are exposed upon other accounts; they are fined and imprisoned for refusing to take an oath; for not paying their t.i.thes; for disturbing the public a.s.semblies, and meeting in the streets, and places of public resort; some of them have been whipped for vagabonds, and for their plain speeches to the magistrate.

Under favour of the then toleration, they opened their meetings at the Bull and Mouth, in Aldersgate-street, where women, as well as men, were moved to speak. Their zeal transported them to some extravagancies, which laid them still more open to the lash of their enemies, who exercised various severities upon them throughout the next reign. Upon the suppression of Venner's mad insurrection, the government, having published a proclamation, forbidding the Anabaptists, Quakers, and Fifth Monarchy Men, to a.s.semble or meet together under pretence of worshipping G.o.d, except it be in some parochial church, chapel, or in private houses, by consent of the persons there inhabiting, all meetings in other places being declared to be unlawful and riotous, &c. &c. the Quakers thought it expedient to address the king thereon, which they did in the following words:

"_O king Charles!_

"Our desire is, that thou mayest live for ever in the fear of G.o.d, and thy council. We beseech thee and thy council, to read these following lines in tender bowels, and compa.s.sion for our souls, and for your good.

"And this consider, we are about four hundred imprisoned, in and about this city, of men and women from their families, besides, in the county jails, about ten hundred; we desire that our meetings may not be broken up, but that all may come to a fair trial, that our innocency may be cleared up.

"London, 16th day, eleventh month, 1660."

On the 28th of the same month, they published the declaration referred to in their address, ent.i.tled, "A declaration from the harmless and innocent people of G.o.d, called Quakers, against all sedition, plotters, and fighters in the world, for removing the ground of jealousy and suspicion, from both magistrates and people in the kingdom, concerning wars and fightings." It was presented to the king the 21st day of the eleventh month, 1660, and he promised them upon his royal word, that they should not suffer for their opinions, as long as they lived peaceably; but his promises were very little regarded afterward.

In 1661, they a.s.sumed courage to pet.i.tion the house of Lords for a toleration of their religion, and for a dispensation from taking the oaths, which they held unlawful, not from any disaffection to the government, or a belief that they were less obliged by an affirmation, but from a persuasion that all oaths were unlawful; and that swearing upon the most solemn occasions was forbidden in the New Testament. Their pet.i.tion was rejected, and instead of granting them relief, an act was pa.s.sed against them, the preamble to which set forth, "That whereas several persons have taken up an opinion that an oath, even before a magistrate, is unlawful, and contrary to the word of G.o.d: and whereas, under pretence of religious worship, the said persons do a.s.semble in great numbers in several parts of the kingdom, separating themselves from the rest of his majesty's subjects, and the public congregations and usual places of divine worship; be it therefore enacted, that if any such persons, after the 24th of March, 1661-2, shall refuse to take an oath when lawfully tendered, or persuade others to do it, or maintain in writing or otherwise, the unlawfulness of taking an oath; or if they shall a.s.semble for religious worship, to the number of five or more, of the age of fifteen, they shall for the first offence forfeit five pounds; for the second, ten pounds; and for the third shall abjure the realm, or be transported to the plantations: and the justices of peace at their open sessions may hear and finally determine in the affair."

This act had a most dreadful effect upon the Quakers, though it was well known and notorious that these conscientious persons were far from sedition or disaffection to the government. George Fox, in his address to the king, acquaints him, that three thousand and sixty-eight of their friends had been imprisoned since his majesty's restoration; that their meetings were daily broken up by men with clubs and arms, and their friends thrown into the water, and trampled under foot till the blood gushed out, which gave rise to their meeting in the open streets. A relation was printed, signed by twelve witnesses, which says, that more than four thousand two hundred Quakers were imprisoned; and of them five hundred were in and about London, and the suburbs; several of whom were dead in the jails.

However, they even gloried in their sufferings, which increased every day; so that in 1665, and the intermediate years, they were hara.s.sed without example. As they persisted resolutely to a.s.semble, openly, at the Bull and Mouth, before mentioned, the soldiers, and other officers, dragged them from thence to prison, till Newgate was filled with them, and mult.i.tudes died of close confinement, in that and other jails.

Six hundred of them, says an account published at this time, were in prison, merely for religion's sake, of whom several were banished to the plantations. In short, says Mr. Neale, the Quakers gave such full employment to the informers, that they had less leisure to attend the meetings of other dissenters.

Yet, under all these calamities, they behaved with patience and modesty towards the government, and upon occasion of the Rye-house plot in 1682, thought proper to declare their innocence of that sham plot, in an address to the king, wherein, appealing to the Searcher of all hearts, they say, their principles do not allow them to take up defensive arms, much less to avenge themselves for the injuries they received from others: that they continually pray for the king's safety and preservation; and therefore take this occasion humbly to beseech his majesty to compa.s.sionate their suffering friends, with whom the jails are so filled, that they want air, to the apparent hazard of their lives, and to the endangering an infection in divers places. Besides, many houses, shops, barns, and fields are ransacked, and the goods, corn, and cattle swept away, to the discouraging trade and husbandry, and impoverishing great numbers of quiet and industrious people; and this, for no other cause, but for the exercise of a tender conscience in the worship of Almighty G.o.d, who is sovereign Lord and King of men's consciences.

On the accession of James II. they addressed that monarch honestly and plainly, telling him, "We are come to testify our sorrow for the death of our good friend Charles, and our joy for thy being made our governor.

We are told thou art not of the persuasion of the church of England, no more than we; therefore we hope thou wilt grant us the same liberty which thou allowest thyself, which doing, we wish thee all manner of happiness."

When James, by his dispensing power, granted liberty to the dissenters, they began to enjoy some rest from their troubles; and indeed it was high time, for they were swelled to an enormous amount. They, the year before this, to them one of glad release, in a pet.i.tion to James for a cessation of their sufferings, set forth, "that of late above one thousand five hundred of their friends, both men and women, and that now there remain one thousand three hundred and eighty-three; of which two hundred are women, many under sentence of praemunire; and more than three hundred near it, for refusing the oath of allegiance, because they could not swear. Three hundred and fifty have died in prison since the year 1680; in London, the jail of Newgate has been crowded, within these two years sometimes with near 20 in a room, whereby several have been suffocated, and others, who have been taken out sick, have died of malignant fevers within a few days. Great violences, outrageous distresses, and woful havock and spoil, have been made upon people's goods and estates, by a company of idle, extravagant, and merciless informers, by persecutions on the conventicle-act, and others, also on _qui tam_ writs, and on other processes, for twenty pounds a month, and two-thirds of their estates seized for the king. Some had not a bed to rest on, others had no cattle to till the ground, nor corn for feed or bread, nor tools to work with, the said informers and bailiffs in some places breaking into houses, and making great waste and spoil, under pretence of serving the king and the church. Our religious a.s.semblies have been charged at common law with being rioters and disturbers of the public peace, whereby great numbers have been confined in prison without regard to age, and many confined in holes and dungeons. The seizing for 20 a month has amounted to many thousands, and several who have employed some hundreds of poor people in manufactures, are disabled to do so any more, by reason of long imprisonment. They spare neither widow nor fatherless, nor have they so much as a bed to lie on. The informers are both witnesses and prosecutors, to the ruin of great numbers of sober families; and justices of the peace have been threatened with the forfeiture of one hundred pounds, if they do not issue out warrants upon their informations." With this pet.i.tion they presented a list of their friends in prison, in the several counties, amounting to four hundred and sixty.

During the reign of king James II. these people were, through the intercession of their friend Mr. Penn, treated with greater indulgence than ever they had been before. They were now become extremely numerous in many parts of the country, and the settlement of Pennsylvania taking place soon after, many of them went over to America. There they enjoyed the blessings of a peaceful government, and cultivated the arts of honest industry.

As the whole colony was the property of Mr. Penn, so he invited people of all denominations to come and settle with him. A universal liberty of conscience took place; and in this new colony the natural rights of mankind were, for the first time, established.

These Friends are, in the present age, a very harmless, inoffensive body of people; but of that we shall take more notice hereafter. By their wise regulations, they not only do honour to themselves, but they are of vast service to the community.

It may be necessary here to observe, that as the Friends, commonly called Quakers, will not take an oath in a court of justice, so their affirmation is permitted in all civil affairs; but they cannot prosecute a criminal, because, in the English courts of justice, all evidence must be upon oath.

_An account of the persecution of Friends, commonly called Quakers in the United States._