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Taylor & Francis, Ltd.

Popular Hostility Towards Quakers in Mid-Seventeenth-Century England


Author(s): Barry Reay
Source: Social History, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Oct., 1980), pp. 387-407
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4285010
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BarryReay

hostility

Popular

towards

Quakers

in

mid-seventeenth-centur
England*
Hostility towards Quakers is a neglected aspect of seventeenth-century social
history. Of course it is not a phenomenon that completely dominated the minds
of the English men and women of that period, but it was there none the less. When
the Quakers burst rather dramatically on to the scene in the i 65os, reactions were
mixed. The young John Locke thought them 'madd or jugglers', worthy of mirth
and derision rather than rancour.1 Oliver Cromwell and his council suggested that
Quaker perversity arose from a defect in understanding rather than 'malice in their
wills'.2 Others were more charitable; indeed in several of the borough and county
communities (for example Bristol, Colchester, Lancashire and Cheshire) Friends
were able to enrol radical and influential support. The movement's success during
the initial decades of its existence (and what is known of its social composition)
suggests that the Quaker message was able to attract substantial numbers of what
were known as the middling and poorer sort of people. There is evidence too, at
the popular level, of community support of Quakers, particularly over the sect's
vehement opposition to tithes.3 Yet it would still be true to say that the general
reaction was one of hostility and fear rather than sympathy or mirth - at all levels
of society. In some areas of Britain evidence of a man's Quakerism was enough
to have him turned out of the army, out of his home, to lose him his tenancy, even
to have his vote disputed.4 In New England it was enough for him to be
disenfranchised, or for him and his female co-religionist to be fined, whipped,
branded, mutilated, banished or executed.5
Throughout the I650s Quakers appeared before the quarter sessions and assizes
* I am grateful to the Working Group in
Social History, Adelaide, Christopher Hill,
Robert Dare, Mike Presdee, Philip Almond
and Wilfrid Prest for their valuable comments
on earlier drafts of this article.
1 E. S. De Beer (ed.), The Correspondenceof
John Locke (Oxford, 1976), I, 4I-2, 83-4, 126.
2 N.
Penney (ed.), Extracts from State

Papers (19I3),
3

34.

For the above, see my 'Early Quaker


Activity and Reactions to it, I 65 2- I 664', Uni-

versity of Oxford D.Phil. thesis, I979.


4 J. Besse, A Collection of the Sufferings of
the People called Quakers (2 VOIS, 1753), I, 762;
II,
96; Nottinghamshire Record Office,
DD/SR 22 I /96/4 (letter concerning the Yorkshire election, 1658/9).
6 G. D. Langdon, Pilgrim Colony (New
Haven, 1966), 69, 72-3, 75, 88; K. T. Erikson,
Wayward Puritans: A Study in the Sociology
of Deviance (New York, I966), 107-36.

387

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388

Social History

VOL 5: NO

for a variety of offences. The Vagrancy Act (39 Eliz. c. 4) was revised and extended
with the Quakers specifically in mind, in an effort to control the rapidly expanding
sect. Some corporations barred meetings from their towns, while others less
ceremoniously arranged for North Country Quaker women to be whipped out of
their jurisdictions. When in I656 a leading Friend James Nayler entered Bristol
on a donkey, his hair and beard styled in the manner attributed to Christ, his
companions (mostly women) walking beside him singing 'Holy, holy, holy, Lord
God of Israel', kissing his feet and laying their garments before him in the mud,
the reaction that ensued exposed only too well the fundamental fears and tensions.
Nayler was arrested and examined by a parliamentary committee. There were
Mosaically inspired suggestions of stoning. Richard Cromwell told the diarist
Thomas Burton that he was convinced Nayler 'must die'. In the end Parliament
decided on a more 'lenient' punishment. Nayler was to be branded, bored through
the tongue, whipped and pilloried; he was to be confined indefinitely, without relief
or outside contact and at hard labour. God was to be protected with a vengeance.6
In i659, as part of a more general fear of sectaries, hatred of Quakers caused
many to look eventually to the deposed monarchy as the only salvation from
religious and social anarchy. In short, as I have argued elsewhere, hostility towards
the Quakers contributed to the restoration of the Stuarts.7
During the I66os the issues were different but all the indications are that the
Quakers suffered more than other nonconformists. They were prosecuted under
the provisions of a miscellany of sixteenth- and early-seventeenth-century statutes,
including those against recusants. The church courts moved against them. They
were arrested in droves in i66i at the time of an alleged Fifth Monarchist plot
against the Restoration government. And unlike any other sect they had an Act
of their own, the Quaker Act of I662, legislation that foreshadowed the betterknown Conventicle Act of i664.8
Why was there so much hostility? The attitudes of the gentry and ministers are
not difficult to fathom. There was quite simply a fear of social revolution. The
gentry and ministers were alarmed by the sect's property-threatening stand against
tithes and their tempting of the lower orders with dangerous doctrines." The
Quakers were 'those new Antichristians ... who are not free to be Tenants to other
men'. Quaker principles, Charles II urged, were 'inconsistent with any kind of
government'.'0
Their light within was a great leveller, removing and questioning
formal traditional guides, the established rules upon which good order was based.
Scripture, ministers, the church, the rigid hierarchical structure of society, the
magistracy, the law, all were challenged. The sect's 'thee' and 'thou' which
anticipated the radicals of the French Revolution, their refusal to doff hat to social
See my 'Early Quaker Activity', ch. 3.
1 See my 'The Quakers, I 659, and the
Restoration of the Monarchy', History, LXIII
(1978), 193-213.
8 For the authorities and Quakers during
the early Restoration period, see my 'Early
Quaker Activity', ch. 6.
6

" See my 'Quaker opposition to tithes


Past and Present, forthcoming.
10 T. Philadelphus, Exceptions Many and
7ust (Oxford, I 65 3), 2 2; Recordsof the Governor
and Company of Massachusetts Bay (5 vols.
I652-I660',

Boston, I853-4),

IV,

Pt

2,

i65-6.

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October I980

Hostility towards Quakers

389

superiors, their unwillingness even to recognize titles - courageous stuff in the


deferential world of the seventeenth century - predictably enraged the men of
property. 'Disrespect and Irreverence to those above us are really levelling
Principles, and like Drink make the Peasant equal with a Lord', John Stillingfleet
observed; he was referring to the Quakers."'And contemporaries were offended
by the militant role that Quakerwomen played. Full of impudency and 'no woman
but a man' was how one justice's wife described the Quaker Ann Blaykling. Such
'huswives as shee was', Deborah Maddock was told by the mayor of Chester, were
'fitter for the Stockes or to bee ducked in a Cooke-Stoole than carry Letters; and
come soe before her Betters so irreverently'."2 Patriarchalismwas at risk, and the
implications were not limited to families.
For if the woman should be the man, if the Subject should be the Magistrate,
if the Son should be the Father, if the Servant should be the Master, would
not these things bring a confusion of all states, and of all things, for it is
impossible that mankind should be governed without these differences of
persons, states, and degrees of men, both in the Church and
Common-wealth.. .13
Nor should we underestimate the outrage that was provoked by the Quakers'
religious beliefs: their minimization of the importance of a historic Christ, their
belief that the spirit was above the scriptures, their rejection of orthodox ideas
about the Trinity and heaven and hell."4 The battle for souls was genuine enough.
'While thousands are in damnation for want of the light, they would take it from
you, that you might go there also', Richard Baxter wrote of the sects in I657, and
he obviously had the Quakers in mind."' In any case social and religious
heterodoxy merged. Religion was 'the glue and soder that cements a Kingdom,
or Church together'; 'sound Doctrine, pure Religion... are the ligaments, and
bonds of a Christian State'. Or as Robert South put it, somewhat more bluntly:
'If there was not a Minister in every Parish, you would quickly find cause to
encrease the number of Constables. '16
So it is not difficult to account for the hostility of the elite. But my concern in
this article is more with popular hostility towards Quakers: motives, attitudes,
behaviour. My aim is to add to our understanding of popular attitudes and crowd
behaviour in the seventeenth century.
" J. Stillingfleet, Seasonable Advice Con-

Discovery (I656), passim.


16 R. Baxter, One Sheet for the Ministry
12 Cornwall Record Office, DD/SF
285/64
(I657), 3.
16 S. Clarke, Golden Apples (X659), 38,
(Papers of Sufferings I655-85); The Cheshire
Sheaf, v (1970), i8.
205-6; R. South, Ecclesiastical Policy (Oxford,
13 J.
G[askin], A Just Defence (i66o), IOI.
i 66o), 7.
14
See, for example, J. Clapham, A Full

cerning Quakerism (I

702),

XI.

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390

Social History

VOL 5: NO 3

II
There is plenty of evidence for popular hatred of Quakers. During the early years
of the movement missionary activity was invariably accompanied by unrest and
hostility. In the villages and towns of Cumberland and Yorkshire in the 1650s,
Quakers were frequently set upon by groups of assailants armed with staffs and
clubs. In Lancashire, said George Fox, referring to his own unfortunate
experiences, it was the custom 'to runn 20 or 40 people upon one man'. It was
the same further south. In Bristol, for instance, in I654, the apprenticeswere out
in the streets calling for the sect's removal. In Evesham in I655, when they
attempted to hold meetings, Quakers were stoned, spat at and urinated on."7We
could go on - the mob attacksof I659 and i66o provide other obvious examples.18
But if easily established, popular hatred is harderto explain. The sources simply
do not permit an analysis of victims and mobs in the way, say, that Rude has done
for crowd activity in different periods and countries.19There are no police files
to work from; and since (significantly it appears)the authorities rarelytook action
against the attackersof Quakers,the quartersessions and assize recordsare seldom
of much help. Furthermore, the Quakers rarely named their opponents or
described the mobs except in the vaguest of terms. There are frustrating gaps in
the little evidence that is available. We may know who the victims of a particular
incident were but not the attackers, or vice versa. We may discover Quakers
engaged in activity that would be expected to provoke popular hostility engrossing or hoarding of grain for example - yet never link those Quakersto any
specific incident. Nor, approaching the problem another way, does the nature of
Quakeroffences permit an analysis of witnesses against Quakersin the mannerthat
McFarlanehas with witchcraftdepositions.20Witchcraftwas anuniquely subjective
and revealing offence, more in the mind of the victim than the accused; whereas
Quaker offences (disturbance of ministers, recusancy, non-payment of tithes)
actually took place and witnesses were usually ministers, churchwardens or
constables, or, during a slightly later period, professional informers. Yet having
said this, we do sometimes know either who the victims of crowd action were or
the social status of the Quaker community in a particularly troubled area. The
copious literature on Quaker sufferings (the Quakers recorded all their trials and
sufferings)often revealsvaluableinformationconcerning motives; quartersessions
records and contemporarydiaries are also occasionally revealing. In short, we have
enough to venture some suggestions.
17 N. Penney (ed.), The First Publishers of
Truth (1907), 33, 35, 36-7; N. Penney (ed.),
The Journal of George Fox (2 vols. New York,
1973 edn), I, 35-6, 41, 57-9, 6o; Friends'
House Library (hereafter F.H.L.), A. R.
Barclay MSS. I4, I7; H. Smith, Something
Further Laid Open (i 656), i.

18 Reay, 'Quakers, i659, and the Restoration', 2o6, 208, 209, 212.
" For instance, The Crowd in History
or Paris and London in the Eighteenth
(I964),
Century (New York, 1973 edn).
20 Cf. A. Macfarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor
and Stuart England ( 970), chs. I -I 2.

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October I980

Hostility

towards

Quakers

39I

III
Some of the hostility was overtly political. As Hill has pointed out, Quakers were
attacked as 'Roundheads '*21 'It is the same man that was called Roundhead, that
is called Quaker', wrote the Quaker Edward Billing in i658.22 This was the case
in the days immediately following Charles II's landing. Several Gloucestershire
Quakers were manhandled when they refused to drink to the health of the King
and 'the Confusion of all Phanatiqs' (a political as much as a religious soubriquet).23
The Quakers were attacked as political radicals, identifiable evidence of the
excesses of the Interregnum. As Arise Evans put it in i 66o: 'The Quakers give
out forsooth, that they will not rebel nor fight, when indeed the last year, and all
along the War, the Army was full of them '.24 Others must have shared his
sentiments. When Quakers were imprisoned in Lyme Regis in June I66o a Dorset
mob threw stones at the prison window. In Harwich (Essex) a month earlier a mob
had attacked Quakers amidst cries that 'the King is now coming, who will hang
or banish you all'. A Cambridge crowd chanted that the Quakers were 'rebels'
and set about demolishing a meeting house. Others were attacked in Somerset:
in Shepton Mallet and Somerton.25 But political motivation was not the only reason
for hostility.
Much can be put down to simple ignorance - the effects of indoctrination from
pulpit and pamphlet. Before he had even met any Quakers, Richard Davies was
'afraid of any who had the name of a Quaker' ; they 'were much preached against'
and were represented as 'a dangerous sort of people'.26 Ignorance was nurtured
by the propaganda of gentry and minsters, for the sect was portrayed as little more
than a band of dangerous criminals and atheists. Readers of tracts, newsbooks and
the occasional almanac and chapbook, were treated to tales of the bizarre effects
of rejection of priestly and biblical mediators, the fruits of the Quaker overemphasis
upon the spirit within. There was 'a credible report' of the attempted sacrifice
of children, accounts of the self-destructive antics of John Toldervy, John Gilpin,
James Parnell and others, allegations of incest, buggery and general immorality.27
21 C. Hill, The World Turned Upside Down
i 88; e.g. ournal of George Fox, I, I I 5.
B[illing], A Wordof Reproof(I 659), I I.

(1 972),
22 E.

23 F.H.L., Swarthmore MS. 1, 321; F.H.L.,


MS. Great Book of Sufferings, I, 422-4.
24 A. Evans, To the Most High and
Mighty
Prince Charles the II (i 66o), 64.
2a Dorset Record Office (hereafter D.R.O.),
(Dorset Quarterly Meeting SufferNio/AI5
ings), 3; G. Fox the younger, A True Relation
(i66o), 3; Besse, Collection, I, 87-8; F.H.L.,
MS. Portfolio, I, 73; Somerset Record Office
(hereafter S.R.O.), DD/SFR 8/i (Somerset
Quarterly
Meeting
Sufferings
Book
i656-i672),
Pt I, fos 38, 38v.

27 There is a mass of material. For some


examples, see F. H[igginson], A Brief Relation
of the Irreligion of the Northern Quakers (i 653),
3I; J. Toldervy, The Foot out of the Snare
(i656),

passim; J. Gilpin,

The Quakers Shaken

(Newcastle, I 653) passim; G. Benson et al., An


Answer to John Gilpin's Book (I655), 5-7; The
Lambs Defence against Lyes (i656), passim;
Quakers are Inchanters (i655), passim; The
Publick Intelligencer, 3 I (28 April-5 May
I656), 5 13-I6; J. Clapham, A Full Discovery
(I656), 5i; R. Blome, T7heFanatick History
(x66o), passim; W. Kennett, A Register and
Chronicle (1728), 641; B. (Capp, Astrology and
the Popular Press. English Almanacs If0I800oo
26 J. E. Southall (ed.), Leaves from the (I979),
234; Reay, 'Quakers, I659, and the
History of Welsh Nonconformity... Autobio- Restoration', 205, 2o8. I am grateful to Dr M.
graphy of Richard Davies (Newport, I 899), I 2,
Spufford for the information on chapbooks.
54-5.

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Some Quakers, it was said in I66o, 'had killed their Mother, following the light
within them '*28 Oft-repeated suggestions that Quakers were in reality a Jesuitical
fifth column undermining the church and preparingthe way for a return to Rome,
pandered to a virulent anti-Catholicism.29Although we do not have any specific
evidence for the popular image of the sect, what the ordinaryperson thought when
he or she heard the name Quaker, we can get some idea from the dehumanizing
anti-Quaker literature. While they may not have entirely swallowed the image of
a secretly bloodthirsty sect, possessed of an unhealthy fondness for horses and
a somewhat contradictoryblend of asceticism and lasciviousness, who disparaged
the scriptures, threatened the stability of church and state, and were in all
probability Jesuits in disguise, some of the mud would have stuck. The popular
image may also have included some vague historical awareness that in Munster,
over a century earlier, fanaticalprinciples not unlike those of the Quakershad led
inexorably to levelling, bloodshed and anarchy; it was a comparisonthat the sect's
enemies enjoyed making.30The image in print was damning enough; but when
it is realized that many would have derived their sole knowledge of the new
movement from word of mouth, by rumour, speculation and from the hostile
pulpit - or from the odd woodcut-print or ballad - it is not surprising that there
was widespread fear and hostility.31 'Some people were so blind and dark', wrote
the Quaker Davies of the early years of his sect, 'that they looked upon us to be
some strange creatures, and not like other men and women.' One man exclaimed
when faced by members of the sect for the first time, 'these be Christians like
ourselves, but where are the Quakers?'32
Even when the Quakers had already made their initial impact in a particular
region there could still be hostility from outlying areas. Apart from normal class
tensions in the local community and other factors which we will deal with later,
the general rule seems to have been that it was outsiders who were attackedrather
than close neighbours or members of the community. Thus in Lancashirein I655
a meeting in Tottington was brokenup by a 'deal of rude people' from nearbyBury.
Again during the reaction against the sect in i659-60 it was often outsiders who
were attacked: in Newark-on-Trent and Broad Cerne for example. When the
homes of local Quakers were mobbed there is some evidence that it was because
Blome, Fanatick History, I 14.
Eg. W. Prynne, A New Discovery of Some
Romish Emissaries (X656), io; R. Baxter, The
QuakersCatechism(1 655), sig. C2; The Publick
Intelligencer, 36 (2-9 June i656), 605; Mercurius Politicus, 348 (5-I2 February I656/7),
7587; J. Ives, The Quakers Quaking (i 656), 43;
J. Tombes, True Old Light (i 66o), sig. A2v; I.
Bourne, A Defence of the Scriptures (i 656), sig.
A2. For anti-Catholicism, see R. Clifton, 'The
popular fear of Catholics during the English
Revolution', Past and Present, LII (1971),
23-55; J. Miller, Popery and Politics in England
i66o-i688 (Cambridge, 1973), ch. 4.
30
See J. S[cotton], YohannesBecoldus Redi28

29

vivus: or the English Quaker, the German


Enthusiast Revived (I659), passim.
31 For prints and ballads, see The Quakers
Dream (i655), frontispiece, illustrated below;
The Quakers Fear (n.p., i656 ?), a ballad to be
sung to the tune of 'Summer Time' or
'Bleeding Heart'; [Sir John Berkenhead], The
Four-Legg'd Quaker [I659?],
reproduced
below; Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS. Ashmole 36, fos 88-9: 'Newes from Colchester,
or a propper New Ballad; of certaine carnall
passages between a Quaker and a Colt'.
32 Southall (ed.), Leaves from the History of
Welsh Nonconformity, 54-5. Cf., also, Swarthmore MS. I, 3I5.

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October

I980

393

Hostility towards Quakers

they were sheltering aliens. When the Quaker John Coale preached in the streets
of York in I653, 'some of the Rude people of the Cittie did assemble at Night
together, & Broke open the dores att Cornett Denhams ... & sayd they would poole
his wife in peeces for harboringe such a fellowe '.3 This is not surprising. The
same was true of anti-Catholicism in seventeenth-century England and antiProtestantism in eighteenth-century Toulouse.34 It seems to have been parishes
not noted for their Quakerism but adjacent to strongly Quaker areas that
experienced the greatest paranoia during the Quaker fear in Cheshire and
Lancashire in I659: Manchester, Warrington, Cheadle, Chester, Bolton, Bury.35
It was the idea of the Quaker that was hated and feared rather than the individual.
Xenophobia may account for some of the enmity. Seventeenth-century society
was highly geographically mobile. The population turnover in a parish could be
as high as 50 per cent in a ten-year period, and few people would have lived out
their lives in the same parish. But mobility was predominantly short range,
normally under twenty miles and to a great extent under ten miles. Even the
majority of vagrants, who had wider geographical horizons than most of the
population, travelled less than fifty miles from their place of origin.36 Migration
was intra- rather than inter-county. Indeed in his survey of population mobility
in seventeenth-century Sussex, Cornwall discovered that only fourteen of his
sample of 202 predominantly rural inhabitants came from outside the county and
that nine of those were from adjacent Surrey and Kent. There was little contact
between what we can roughly describe as north and south. As Slack's survey of
vagrancy shows, only 4 per cent of vagrants taken in Kent, Sussex, Surrey, Devon,
Cornwall, Colchester, Hertfordshire, Salisbury and Norwich, during the first half
of the seventeenth century, came from the north (Cheshire, Lancashire, Yorkshire,
Westmorland, Cumberland, Durham and Northumberland). Of course there was
long-distance migration to London. And in the provincial towns the population
of outsiders would probably have been higher than in the villages. But even Clark's
figure for northern (general) migration into the urban areas of Kent - 5 per cent
of his sample of-people resident in the town of Canterbury - is hardly indicative
33 [W. Addamson, et al.] The Persecution of
thempeople they call Quakers (n.p., [ I656]), 3;
Cain's Off-spring Demonstrated (I659),
I;
D.R.O., Nio/AI5,
i; 'Great Book of Sufferings', ii, Yorks, I7; A. R. Barclay MS. I7. Cf.
Besse, Collection, I, 254, 689, for other attacks
upon outsiders.
34 Clifton, 'Popular fear of catholics', 49;
D. D. Bien, The Calas Affair (Princeton,

I960),
35

55, I46.

Reay, 'Quakers, I659, and the Restor-

lation mobility in pre-industrial England',


Genealogists Magazine, XVII (1973-4), 4z8; P.
Clark, 'Migration in England during the late
seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries',
Past and Present, LXXXIII (I979), 59, 68, 72-4;
A. L. Beier, 'Vagrants and the social order in
Elizabethan England', Past and Present, LXIV
(I 974), i 9; P. Clark, 'The migrant in Kentish
in P. Clark and P. Slack
towns I58o-i640',
(eds), Crisis and Order in English Towns
I500-I 700 (1972),
122-3; J. Cornwall, 'Evi-

ation', 207.

dence of population

See L. Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England I500-I800


146-7;
(I977),
W. R. Prest, 'Stability and change in old and
new England', Journal of Interdisciplinary
History, vi (I976), 361; P. Spufford, 'Popu-

teenth century', Bulletin of the Institute of


Historical Research, XL (I967), 146, 150; P.

36

mobility

in the seven-

Slack, 'Vagrants and vagrancy in England,


1598-I 664', Economic History Review, 2nd
series, XXVIi (1974),
368-9.

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Social History

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of an influx from the north. In his work on seventeenth-century Maidstone, Clark


found that only 4 per cent of his sample had come from more than twenty miles
away.37
During the turmoil of the civil war years, with armies on the march, there
was more mixing and travelling about. Yet it would still be true to say that the
average villager, or for that matter many town dwellers, in the southern and home
counties, the West Country or East Anglia, would have had few contacts with
northerners. Edmund Skipp, a Herefordshire minister, did not even know where
Kendal was.38
But the Quakers, most of whom during the earliest years were northerners (many
of them women), were tramping about the countryside visiting the most remote
and provincial of areas. In I654 John Audland was averaging thirty miles a day
and visited at least forty places, passing backwards and forwards through more than
twenty counties in a matter of a few months.39 Unfortunately it is rarely that
itineraries of this sort survive for this early period. But we do know that some time
later (in the I67os and I 68os) another northerner, Thomas Salthouse, covered
nearly iooo miles in less than six months.40 And Charles Marshall (from Bristol)
attended over 400 meetings in thirty-six different counties during the first two
years of his ministry.41 There is no reason to assume that during the headier I650s
the pattern would have been very different.
So it is at least possible that some of the hostility was a parochial reaction to
what was seen as either an outside or northern invasion. For William Prynne
Quaker successes in the south were a vindication of Jeremiah I..4: 'That out of
THE NORTH AN EVILL SHALL BREAK FORTH UPON ALL THE INHABITANTS OF THE LAND.'

According to Ralph Farmer Quakers were 'Northern locusts', 'Morice-dancers


from the North '.42 'Our quiet west country people do Judge them to be men of
a strang humor', it was reported in I655 after the sect's impact in that part of the
country.43 And Quakers certainly met with intense opposition when they entered
the rural areas of Sussex, which, we have seen, appear to have had little contact
with outsiders.44
The early Quakers were intruders - perhaps at times scapegoats for the tension
generated by a society in flux. Like witches they could be used to account for the
unaccountable: in this case, the break-up of families and the undermining of
deference. Like the early Methodist ministers of the following century, they were
3' Beier, op.
Clark, op. cit.,

Cit.,

122,

20;
127;

Slack, op. cit., 379;


Cornwall, Op. cit.,

I50.

41 The Journal ... of Charles Marshall (i 844

edn), I4-20.

The percentages are based on the figures of


Clark and Slack, but the calculations are my
own. The information on Maidstone is also
based on the work of Clark but taken from
Spufford, 'Population mobility', 479.
38 E. Skipp, The Worlds Wonder(i 655), I I.
Il 'Swarthmore MS Letters of John Audland', ed. C. Horle (typescript, F.H.L., 1975),
no. I8. I am grateful to Mr Horle for drawing

42 W. Prynne, The Quakers Unmasked(2nd


edn, I655), 36; R. Farmer, The Great Mysteries
of Godlinesseand Ungodlinesse(i655), sigs A2,
A2v.
43 Public Record Office (hereafter P.R.O.),

my attention to this typescript.

Swarthmore MS.

40

A. R. Barclay MS.

SP. I 8/97/87.
44 East Sussex Record Office (hereafter
E.S.R.O.), SOF 5/I
(Sussex Quarterly

Meeting

Sufferings
I,

I655-1751),

315.

132.

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I-4,

27-8;

October I980

395

Hostility towards Quakers

T H'E~i

To the Tuneof theDOG ahdElder'sMAID,


Or, tlhc LADY'S

Ll thitr

ave two

or butonu

Eire,

"ales

(I
trell ye half)
A.Auye,ua
nEJfxColGfltal hear
Wlill h}]|2nir
tctvervCalf.
sInr
/{lt} ed5
t: necsCtSt#?r
AB5aher wruld tutrsTiot pers
herss
iocucaahta SFoaland rntncd
lObaiht)b
51-./p. e..-d,

hthe C.
-

u1,sPs.
- we
..ea
~w.p..No

I
..

The tiafler frw his Colt dcfii'J,


V'Wichnext his I;ul girls erosbt;
wit;iChitde
rtorifl'sP I!yprov'J
It
kelwQAll woulXdcomeout:

t TheDnl;c afruttbegasto
"l

OAt

oft hc Colt was nigh,


The Owevretr
(Ol)tl6vngtheir E-nbrc:-)
Anddrawingneretrdii elrpic
The Qpa er's forrellFace
My Foal is
((thcnhe cryrs,
Andfintce,yat himr3n)
ThenRoguc,l'ii hhvL
thecealter'd
twice,
As Ine andcke
cs Man!
i/pt, &C.
Alt

D,v:ll, dralttlroartemblc2
now
Ali 1) v:ll, do'Ll hlou trembic f now
r.soregsiriu
tihywill;

Ladies
krow
or .Marts
indrre3ching
9But
Thouaha a Coltrstooth lilt1:
mint's notguiltyofthisFaNO,
r
Sixc 1s trythcc compclled
r oor thir', whom no mancucr Backt
Thtir

wrckcdly hall Bellied.

Help,&c.

Cae
A

ForthojghtheThwmeJtuns by thy ;idr,


Itcannet walbthce clean
'TisnotthyBleating
SoonsconPaintsa
Holdforthluchwanton
courres,

KnowonlyMaidsAffairs,

AndR .kia MenwithMarcs.


Help,&c.

Thy Oyfitershintthe very Saints


To hotn the very Horfcs.

Now

.%S ,

i
,nAP."l...X
S
.
4.1

when

tilaa

Town was read,

Toiomtlachfoue.legg'd
Sifler

Forfure asHf*r# comeslfrom

Horte

FromColt'twcalifdC#"l.#eAr.
aaer hep,
Help,L.rda
C
,

OJea'rtw*rsuda,Ceru
Fee eke 2.
Ta
Stge.

2reo

ia~kv -

as

A Moaltrous
Sowuntam'd

With backhalf Hair balf WVoolappeard,


'TwasMediaSwnwnim'd:
haverecourle
SoColetlte muat

ButHorl-men, Mare-men,
aI mad
fome
Who MmnandBeaftperplex,
Not onlyfromEa.Herpley
come,!
ButfromWefgiQ-XAdlrsex.
IA.-

ton,

Shce-Presbyters candeal wish Dogs,

In Meadows, Woods,and Paltroes.

Saa.,&.oe,

Eldnr', lIatrpexdeat;

will grow to ftrongfor you


Now Horfc aed Manare joyrid:
WhikcCavr.llier,poor fooii Roges,

C E N, withtiht andgroam) Though


theyfalutenouin lheStreet
O Fricnd
(lidGl
(Becaulcthey areorrrMalerts)
Lct thisthy nrathPyyaCe!
'rasnowreveal'Jwh "karimeet
(Andgav:himtheneigltnewhalf-Crowns

JA

Pae. I.

wt

flakkrs

Help,&c.

34.

ThoughaltyourPower'scombin'd,

Help,&c.

all?,

AN.-'e

..rot .

Are seithet Lords nor Commoos.


Help, &C.

0E4~x,5LPx,
Eaglaarf a pride,
' O E{%ex,Bj'ex, Eag1dd'. pride,
Gh burn lrislong.tayldQ4ean,

Help, &c.

Forthins begot'twcen
MareandMat

Wherefliccotildnorrvolt,
YethehadnoScnAs SporrnorSwitch
To ridethewillingColt.

To makehim hold his prce)

b5aM.

This Cetw. noquashorer thing,


Will msse a dreadfullBreah:
Yetthr anAghA(lemay Speakot* Sing,
0 Ict not HofrfesPreach !
But Bridletfch wild Colts whocan
A henthey'll
obeynoSummons,

The Colt was rilentall this while,


And rherefoc 'twas no Rape,.
Tbcvigin Foal he did beguile,
And fiuintendsto fcape:
For though hc got her in a Dirct

I forthis
The manreply'u,
thotrgh
Conce31 thyHuegerMtirger,
ic1rwiulifora Piece
Dol>ttlrink
A FillvFoalsoBuggerf

Alas you know by Mi's el camc


ThC FPeal
diOefeaferoeplef,
Andtno.we arrh,evc,yfame
Is brokeinto our S,ablcs
For!eath hathsloin
ro many Steeds
FlozmPfiagandpcerand Canier
ThorstslsoewwMsrt .btr ae Ws
* A At.
s-ta W.t

(w

a HThat's Daughterto a r
Hirale,
&c.

theMe wib.n.

But htan now playdrthe Hlcrl.


Help, &c.
b

tsat.e,

Moey tAintg)
IrpFiserlihis
s
I t r1, tals
id 1rn4
5tbours,b
Mt

Oi..* hCa

rplay

P5:rtheen*D.gd

FALL.

k,A,~4....n

e "z3rtf
i
e
fE

[Sir John Berkenhead], The Four Legg'd Quaker (n.p., i659?), Bodleian Lib., Wood

4I6

(70)

men and women 'bent on removing traditional landmarks of social life',


'unleashing unwanted social and religious innovation'.45 They were the objects
of what I would describe as a blind gut-conservatism and what Morrill has referred
to as a 'fully developed provincialism', championed earlier during the i 640s by
45 Hostility towards Quakers in the seventeenth century is strikingly similar to hostility
towards Methodists in the eighteenth: see
J. Walsh, 'Methodism and the mob in the
eighteenth century', Studies in ChurchHistory,

(the quotations come from


213-27
Walsh, op. cit., 222, 223). I am grateful to Mr
K. Thomas for drawing my attention to this
article.
VIII (1972),

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396

VOL 5: NO 3

Social History

the Clubmen (Quakers occasionally referred to their opponents as Clubmen)4f who


had banded together to repel the invader and innovation. The Quakers were not
only foreigners and intruders but also the very apotheosis of the ecclesiastical and
social upheaval that was anathema to the provincial traditionalist who hearkened
back to the old order and (like the Wiltshire and Dorset Clubmen) a return to the
'pure religion of Queen Elizabeth and King James '.4
We shall see that as Davis found of religious riot in France in the sixteenth
century, attackers of Quakers can be seen as assuming clerical and magisterial roles:
'defending true doctrine or ridding the community of defilement .48 Friends could
be extremely disruptive, splitting families (modern sects are hated for similar
reasons) and upsetting the local community. Indeed, sectarian loyalties superseded
familial ties, for as one Quaker put it 'it's better to forsake wife and children and
all that a man hath.. . for christ and the truth sake '.4 When Jane Holmes arrived
in Malton in I652 she drew women from their husbands and sons from their
fathers. Thomas Dowslay's son told him he was no more to him 'than any other
man'; and Major Bayldon was unable to 'keepe his wife at home'.-0
Then there were the recurring accusations that Quakers were witches. Apart
from some murmurings about Quaker diabolism in Dorset in I659 and i66o which
seem to have come to the attention of the assizes,5, an incident in New England
in I656 in which (as witches) two Quaker women underwent a humiliating and
brutal internal examination,52 and a barefaced attempt by justices and ministers
in Cambridgeshire to tar the Quaker movement with the witchcraft brush,63 few
such charges ever reached the courts. None received the complete encouragement
of officialdom. If they had, the history of the early Quaker movement might have
been different; Cambridge might have become the Quaker Salem. But the fears
Eg. G. F[ox], To Those that have been
formerly in Authority ([X66o]), 5.
46

47

For

Clubmen,

see

D.

Underdown,

Somerset in the Civil War and Interregnum


J. S. Morrill, The Revolt of the
(I973),
I33;
Provinces (1976), 98-III,
I96-200
(the quotation comes from Morrill, op. cit., i io).
48 N. Z. Davis,
'The rites of violence: religious riot in sixteenth-century
France', Past

and Present, LIX (I973),


49 Swarthmore MS.

6I-5.
VI, 5I.

50 P.R.O., Assi. 44/5 (Assizes, North-East


Circuit Indictments),
Yorks I652, most of
which - though not Jane's surname or the fact
that she was a Quaker - is printed in J. Raine

(ed.), Depositionsfrom the Castle of York (Surtees Soc., XL, i86),


5S-7. For examples of
sectarian ties cutting across families, see N.

Penney (ed.) Recordof the Sufferingsof Quakers


in Cornwall I655-I686 (I928),
17 ff.; S.R.O.,
DD/SFR 8/i, Pt I, fo. 26v; The History of the
Life of Thomas Ellwood ( 714), 47 ff. For fears
of the effect of Quakers upon the family, see G.

Fox et al., Saul's Errand to Damascus (I654),

i; G. Emmot, A Northern Blast or the Spiritual


Quaker (I655), 6; Higginson, Brief Relation,
75; Farmer, Great Mysteries of Godlinesseand
Ungodlinesse, 87; The Querers and Quakers
The Quakers Terrible
Cause (1653), 14-I5;
Vision (I655), 5.
51 Two Quaker witches were said to have
confessed to having intercourse with the Devil.
[T.
See Blome, Fanatick History, II7-18;
Smith], A Gagg for the Quakers (I659);
P.R.O., Assi. 24/22 (Assizes, Western Circuit
fo. 76.
Order Book I652-I676),
52 G. F[ox] and J. Rous, To the Parliament
of the Commonwealth of England (n.p. [c.
I658/9]),

1-2.

Strange and Terrible Newes from Cambridge (1659), passim; J. Blackley et al., A
Lying Wonder Discovered (I659, passim; E.
Porter, CambridgeshireCustoms and Folklore
(1969), I69-72; W. Y. Tindall, 7ohn Bunyan
53

Mechanick Preacher (New York, 1934),

217

ff.;

M. Spufford, Contrasting Communities(Cambridge, 1974), 285. John Bunyan was involved


in the Cambridge accusations.

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397

Hostility towards Quakers

October 1980

THE

FEAR.

Q:VAKERS
OR,i

Wonderfullfirange and trueNews from the famousTown of Colicheferin Egex,


to

[hewing the mannerhow oue


YODC s Prehl, a Quakerby profeflion,t ok-upon hi'
aft twele daysand twelve nights without any fuftenanceat all, ad called the people
thaawwe his followcrs or Difciples, and faid that all the peopleot Englandthatwere noz
oftei Conre atio,were all daned creatures. Of hi bla(p6mous Life andfeandaleu .
DNashinthe Jayvat Coetch this prefentmonth of Aprih 656 ' you [al herehavea full ReTbt"wui;, SumR tiUn Or bleediug Heart.
htion,

I|

"7,

\W

> 1'cte1wyfz

'Paiiie1
% <; ^

.The "ker,

fe
>~~~~~~~~~~~/

010ito

BUDMPo to 3t*d eUtbe,


i
Zob
t~te wt lop oftal.
(inbiglsstckebl8foU
eapp)e Iteboosat lMAt,
M OV"eheftere31artksasfNM
one
anotetutflpofOtnkepatfustaff.
p~oloobitlttlet Ioasintijp3l,
Ve to
abte pep tbnsoDifor,
trasl* b DMOO
iXat etru1g2 stnu

offlft usketbfi "olpvprit,


ti
Anoontoasktb ttwpobefuIM1.
matrlw
bUnt4
3Letntot
tV2)1btl SWe
ao tkwsorOUtldfinfto5bottf,
fd'
OUTbe
25utgibeas gtac toatnorm
noPONTe.
S:Ittbe otus snP balbe
crainple
berc
2j fteage Pnoterte
3 anpteptan to xclare
takeb&o,
TsOP
tbstSt-bCT
1wcaure,

paeteotbeltctwaota.

.
Anl learn tbtltbitP IL00tOfe aefoe
no,
U'abpttbesliSfnl
a MmtJamnPa

X 0
01so fo 11VWtift

Ible
bte benep betearmo
ZbntbeTp

Po; tn

1e uent abutfromptactto place,


pleac)anntmeae1,
AIMunneetofkto
t
an matters be ol isienle kbitHe
bAtleureto ,lb altole ig Teseb.
utbte botip tLrbe rplttO. *jlo,
onoffMlu,
a iuakcr P
bp
inn aes

,
f4liert
t bnasunto lfln
inn faintbetp
Zbat tcrTc rot of bioZossg rgtionaB
SCoDntiniftrr be fet at naudst,
uobn
bsinn
maneftutrsb uctmeupp antn.
agor.
iffumcoc
antmlvet
bo
gob,n.
t,
Oann
izOt
C
r.oet
v'?t
Zavb in the C oultrre anT tbe. Co'wn.

lptWS

bOpentreflnot,

ParnelOft,
Jamles
00
0o tin3
ecaufetouas fl jwtbfinitf
sw

t a
3 am

;Obet of tne ILoI,


Intsi

thbematoWplbele
anna
aae11.

ettrliU

1oestnbifllf

aZsO"ft tteboculfobint5 0o0 b.

tl

bette,
tbofet4atto notsmte
Wut
i
nte,

bVW aisito
tm
loa tnn
a manp fueb blafpb MOtusb'oS
m
to teople
tbcel b,npeaok,
A tbItube long ae s t0asb. MnasNtPutgtW5'
ftlatenbet beit uneorwtak
n
nDak
;tao
e

The Quakers Fear (n.p., I656?), Bodleian Lib., Wood 40I (i65)

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398

Social History

VOL

5:

NO

and suspicions were real enough. An aura of mystery shrouded the early movement,
while superstition ensured that the Quaker found a niche within the somewhat
broad compass of British folk-lore.54
Quakers were said to bring the rain. It was thought that they had a Jonah-like
effect if allowed on board a ship. And it was claimed that they bewitched their
followers. After their conversion to Quakerism Richard Davies and his companions
' were not free to go into any neighbour's enclosures, for they were so blind, dark,
and ignorant, that they looked upon us as witches, and would go away from us,
some crossing themselves with their hands about their foreheads and faces'.
Bewitching, it was argued, was performed either by means of charms - strings or
ribbons about the wrist (there is a reference in Samuel Pepys's diary to a discussion
concerning this notion) - or by getting people to drink from strange bottles, an
allegation which seems to crop up fairly frequently. The rector of Siddington
(Gloucestershire) refused a drink offered to him by a Quaker, saying that it was
'full of hops and heresy'.55
The case of Jane Holmes, preserved fortunately in the Yorkshire assize records,
provides what is probably the best example of the speculation, uncertainty and
superstition which could surround Quaker activity during the formative years of
the movement. I have already referred to Jane's disruptive influence in Malton
in 1652. She abused the minister and drew people away from the church; she held
meetings at odd hours of the night and split up families. In short, she was 'an
instrument of the disturbance of the whole towne'. Her enemies in Malton
attributed at least part of her diabolical success to a mysterious bottle which she
was said to carry with her. One woman swore that she had seen the Quaker give
a drink to a girl who thereupon lapsed into a trance. Another inhabitant, Anthony
Beedall, deposed that he had met Jane and that she had told him that 'he had an
evill spiritt within him'. She told him to follow her onto the Wolds and she would
'lye his sinns before him', so he accompanied her and drank from a bottle which
she gave him. He went into a trance and was violently sick, but Jane said that it
was only the spirit working in him and that if he would stay with her 'she would
shew him Christ and his twelve Apostles' and that if he would fast for forty days
and forty nights 'he should be as good as Christ'. Finally, after an episode in which
Jane allegedly advised him to walk across the Derwent rather than travel by a boat
which she felt sure would sink, Beedall was found by friends. But he admitted that
he had 'had a great desire to goe to her againe'.56
54 Cf. the old Cornish story that Quakers
are buried upright so that they can be quick off
the mark at Judgement Day: A. Smith, The
Established Church and Popular Religion
I750-I850
(I97 I), 23. It has been suggested
that the tall witch hat of nursery tales derives
from the headgear of women Quakers: K.
Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic
(I973 edn), 58I, n. 77.
"I Swarthmore MS. 1, 27; Penney (ed.),
Journal of GeorgeFox, i, I 69, 273; Strange and
Terrible Newes, 7; A. N. Brayshaw, The

Personality of George Fox ( 933), 70; Southall


(ed.), Leaves from the History of Welsh Nonconformity, 28, 36; Blome, Fanatick History,
The Devil Turned Quaker (1656) [sig.
I 14-15;
A5]; T. Underhill, Hell Broke Loose (i660o),
46; H. J. Cadbury (ed.), Narrative Papers of
George Fox (Richmond, Indiana, I972), 22;
'Great Book of Sufferings', 1, 56; R. Latham
and W. Matthews (eds), The Diary of Samuel
Pepys (197I), IV, 438; D. Roberts, Memoirs of
the Life of John Roberts (2nd edn, 1973), 48.
5" P.R.O., Assi. 44/5, Yorks 1652.

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October I980

Hostility towards Quakers

399

George Fox himself was suspected to be something of a sorcerer or witch, who


rode around on a big black horse and could turn people Quaker by merely holding
them by the hands or by touching their foreheads. He was reputed to be able to
read thoughts and 'discern the complexions of mens soules in their Faces'. Francis
Bugg, an erstwhile convert who later became one of the sect's bitterest critics, said
that it was 'the common Opinion' that Fox 'bewitch'd the People', and Bugg
repeated rumours that the Quaker leader used to distribute groats to labourers who
attended his meetings:
those who took it and kept it, from that time fell into Trouble of Mind, and
a restless Condition, and at last into Fits, and so became stiff Quakers: Others
who carry'd him his Money again, or threw it away, were deliver'd, and
recover'd their right State of Mind.
One tract even claimed that Fox had a long brush of hair by his ears like a fox's
tail 'which he strokes often and playes with and sports with it'.57 Of course a great
deal of the answer to this lies with the behaviour of the sect. William Mosse a tailor
from Over Whitley in Cheshire linked his conversion to an incident in which, after
a terrifying gallop on a big black horse, he was thrown over three great thorn
hedges; 'since that time', Mosse explained proudly, 'he was enlightened '.8 Fox,
if the Journal is any indication, was proud of his reputation and seems to have
played along with it - the bizarre leather suit for example.5 At least one
contemporary noted that the Quaker leader had a tendency to fix his eyes firmly
upon strangers 'as though he wold look them through '.60 Their habitual meeting
places - in woods, commons, on mountains, in houses 'most solitary and remote
from Neighbours, situated in Dales and by-places' - encouraged speculation and
stimulated that fear of the unknown. Malton observers talked suspiciously of the
strange noises that emanated from the Quakers' nightly meetings.61 Their
trembling and shaking, behaviour traditionally associated with the work of Satan,
what Lodowick Muggleton called their 'Witchcraft fits', must have seemed
convincing testimony of demonic possession.2 Like the witch, the Quaker could
be used to explain apparently inexplicable misfortune: such as the death of the
parson in Sherborne in Dorset and the rapid exit of his successor.63 And Quakers
were readily identifiable, either as the outsider or the social nonconformist (with
distinctive speech, behaviour and dress), in a tightly knit community. Witchcraft
could also explain the sect's otherwise unaccountable success.
5 H. J. Cadbury (ed.), George vox's 'Book
of Miracles' (New York, 1973 edn), 95;
Penney (ed.), Journal of George Fox, 1, 31-2,
38, 50, I04; Underhill, Hell Broke Loose, 48;
Higginson, Brief Relation, I8-I9; F. Bugg, A
Finishing Stroke (1712),
240;
The Quaking
Mountebanck (I655), 17.
b8 J. H. E. Bennett and J. C. Dewhurst
(eds), Quarter Sessions Records...for the
County Palatine of Chester, I559-1760
(Rec.
Soc. of Lancs and Cheshire, xciv, I940), i64.
59 Brayshaw, Personality of George Fox, 27.

60

Higginson, Brief Relation, I8-i9.


i i; P.R.O., Assi, 44/5, Yorks I652.
62 L. Muggleton,
A Looking-Glass for
George Fox (1756 edn), 46. Cf. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 569, 58o-I. In
Salem several decades later this kind of
behaviour was taken as symptomatic of witchcraft at work: P. Boyer and S. Nissenbaum,
Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft (Cambridge, Mass., I1975), 4, 25-30.
63 Blome, Fanatick History, I 7-i8.
61 Ibid.,

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Social History

400

VOL 5: NO

Hostility, however, took less bizarreforms than accusationsof witchcraft. Many


disliked the Quakers' ' holier than thou' attitude. The sectary Lodowick
Muggleton considered them 'proud and stiff-necked', 'thinking themselves that
they are better than other People'. Some were repelled by their querulousness.
The Welsh prophet Arise Evans thought them uncivil. Ralph Farmersaid that they
were 'fierce and heady, and raging'. Even women ('the ornament of whose sex
is a meek and quiet spirit') became 'unnatural' and 'immodest' under the Quaker
influence, 'lifting up their voices in the very streets and publike congregations'.6"
Muggleton also disapproved of their austerity and reminded them that 'Christ
himself' did 'keep company with publicans and sinners '*6s John Bunyan was more
suspicious, hinting that this outward gloss concealed a more essential depravity.66
Hence the image which permitted puritanical morality a place beside rampant
debauchery. For just as the Quakers' meeting habits had encouraged rumours of
witchcraft, they stimulated stories of immorality, and they probably became (as
Walsh has said of the eighteenth-century Methodists) the objects of the surrounding
community's own sexual fantasies.67 Lord Saye and Sele thought that, 'like the
Vespers', their night gatherings encouraged lasciviousness. 'Tis now reveal'd',
noted a scurrilous tract probably by the Royalist Sir John Berkenhead who was
referring to the allegations of Quakers buggering mares, 'why Quakers meet in
Meadows, Woods, and Pastures.'i68
IV
It is extremely difficult to explain what can best be described as the socio-economic
basis for popular hostility. Some of the animus was probably economic in
motivation. As anyone even vaguely familiar with corporation records will know,
most communities were extremely sensitive about outside interference in local
trade.69 Since many of the early Quakers were traders, and since many combined
spiritual with more worldly pursuits, commercial rivalry is a possibility which
should not be ignored.70 Edward Coxere certainly claimed that the hostile
64
L. Muggleton, The Neck of the Quakers
Broken (1756 edn), 40, 54; C. Hill, Change and
Continuity in Seventeenth-Century England
(I 974), 64; R. Farmer, The ImpostorDethron'd

(I658),

17.

L. Muggleton and J. Reeve, A Volumeof


Spiritual Epistles (i 820), 8o.
66 G. Offor (ed.), The Worksof John Bunyan
65

(3 vols, I852-3),

II, I83.

Walsh, 'Methodism and the mob', 224.


[W. Fiennes, Lord Saye and Sele], Folly
and Madnesse Made Manifest ([Oxford], I 659),
23; Four Legg'd Quaker. For similar assumptions about Protestant conventicles in sixteenth-century France, see Davis, 'Rites of
violence', 57. The same suspicions are with us
in this century. Alan Smith relates a story he
67

68

was told concerning the Methodists: 'There's


a room behind the chapel and when they've
had the prayers and a bite to eat they turn down
the gas and it's every man for himself. They
call it a love feast!' (Smith, EstablishedChurch,
24.)
69

L. J. Ashford, The History of the Borough

of High Wycombe (1960),

122.

For Quaker social origins, see: A. Cole,


'The social origins of the early friends',
7ournal of the Friends' Historical Society, XLVIII
R. T. Vann, 'Quakerism and
(I957), 99-Ii8;
the social structure in the Interregnum', Past
and Present, XLIII (1969), 71-91, and his The
Social Developmentof EnglishQuakerism(Cambridge, Mass., I969), 47-73; R. Mortimer
(ed.), Minute Book of the Men's Meeting of the
70

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October I980

Hostility towards Quakers

401

treatment he received in Yarmouth was due principally to competition over the


herring traffic, in which he, the mate of a merchantman, was engaged.71Perhaps
economic factors help to account for the rigid anti-Quaker legislation on the New
England mainland in the I 650s - an area in which Rhode Island Quakermerchants
seem to have been undercutting local trade.72It is also worth recalling that the
apprentice insurrection against Bristol Quakers in I654 - merchants and shopkeepers - had the sanction of the boys' masters, probably the Quakers' business
competitors.73But these are only suggestions.
The obvious approach when dealing with underlying social tensions and the
motives behind popular hostility is to look at the composition of the mobs
themselves. What sort of people attackedQuakers?We cannot, I have said before,
apply Rude's methods because we have only Quakerdescriptions to go on: 'Some
of the very basest sort', 'the rudest sort of people', 'Rude people', 'the rude
multitude', 'rude rabble', 'rude people of ye baser sort', 'rude people of ye
town', 'Barbarous rude people', 'vile fellows of ye rude multitude', 'Scholars,
lewd Women, Townsmen & Boys', the 'Rabble of Boys and rude people',
'scholars', 'youths', 'prentices', 'rude boys', 'prentices with the rude people'.7
These descriptions are hardly the stuff that sociological analyses are made of, yet
they are suggestive (if for the moment we can disregard the scholars, students of
Oxford and Cambridge, who were involved partly as pranksters, partly as
custodians of the social, cultural and occupationalstatusquo75) of two main groups.
The first, though the descriptions may have been terms of abuse rather than
sociological observations, was the lower orders. (The epithets 'base' and 'rude'
were used frequently in the seventeenth century to describe the lower classes.76)
The second group was the youths and apprentices.
The involvement of the lo'-er orders suggests that the motivation behind some
of the attacks on Quakers was the kind of social protest that Rude has found of
crowd activity in the eighteenth century and others have discovered in popular
violence in fourteenth-century Spain and sixteenth-century France: 'a groping
desire to settle accounts with the rich, if only for a day, and to achieve some rough
Society of Friends in Bristol I667-I686 (Bristol
Record Society, XXVI, 197I), xxvi-xxix; S. C.
Morland (ed.), The Somersetshire Quarterly
Meeting of the Society of Friends 1668-I699
(Somerset Record Society, LXXV, 1978), 7; A.
Anderson, 'The social origins of the early
Quakers', Quaker History, LXVIII (1979),
33-40;

B. Reay, 'The social origins of early

Quakerism', The Journal of Interdisciplinary


History, XI (I980), 55-72.
71 E. H. W. Meyerstein (ed.), Adventures by
Sea of Edward Coxere (Oxford, 1945), 99. See
also, Narrative Papers of George Fox, 23.
72
7
7

Besse, Collection, ii, 195.


See pp. 403, 404 below.

E. B[illing] to George Fox the younger


The Mount School York, MS.

Friends' Letters; Adventures by Sea of Edward


Coxere, 86; Cain's Off-spring, i; 'Great Book
of Sufferings', ii, London, 3, Yorks, 17;
Smith, Something Further, i; First Publishers
of Truth,35;D.R.O.,Nio/AI5,
I;Swarthmore
MSS. 1,3I5, IV, I6,314; KentCountyArchives
Office (hereafter K.A.O.), CP/BP 125 (Cinque
Ports Brotherhood Papers); Besse, Collection,
1, 87-8, 254; Life of Thomas Ellwood, 78-9.
76 For attacks by students in Oxford and
Cambridge, see Besse, Collection, I, 86-8,
565-6. And for pranksters: Besse, Collection,
I, 566: some students 'proffer'd to put their
Hands under Women's Aprons, and ask'd If
the Spirit were not there?'
76 See
Hill, Change and Continuity, ch. 8.

[i66I]:

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402

Social History

VOL 5: NO

kind of social justice ' Indeed just as during the Gordon riots it was the properties
of wealthy Catholics that were destroyed rather than those of Catholics in general,78
there is a suggestion that it was sometimes the more substantial Quakers who were
attacked rather than Quakers in general: Humphrey Bache the London goldsmith,
Edward Billing the London brewer, Quaker merchants in Bristol.79 In Colchester
several of the sect belonged to the economic elite (and during the I 65os the political
elite): John Furly junior and John Furly senior, linen draper and merchant
respectively, the grocer Thomas Bayles, the baymakers William Havens and
Solomon Fromantell. So they too would occasionally become the butts of a similar
kind of class hatred. Like that of the drunken feltmaker, for instance, who abused
Furly senior and a companion, calling the latter 'a justless turd, old fool and old
rogue' and saying that he (the irony obviously escaped the feltmaker) was as good
a man as Furly's companion was. Or that of the crowd of weavers and women who
besieged the home of Furly junior in I 675, saying that they would 'pull Furly out
by the Eares' and 'fire his house'.80
There are clues, too, in the occupations of Quakers. Some Lancashire Quakers
were money-lenders.81 We know from my own findings and from the work of Vann
and Mortimer that others elsewhere were dealers in the victualling trade - badgers,
corn factors, millers, merchants, grocers, brewers, bakers82 - so they presumably
incurred that well-attested popular hatred and suspicion of middlemen and
speculators, those who were generally thought to be the perpetrators of the periodic
grain crises with which the nation was afflicted.83 Some Quakers, then, were
engaged in activity likely to incur popular wrath; but we only have firm evidence
when they are actually caught and presented for such before the quarter sessions.
Thus the Hertford grocer John King and (probably) the Bedfordshire yeoman
John Crook (before he became a Quaker) were prosecuted for engrossing corn. The
Walthamstow yeoman Mark Sarjeant was in trouble for regrating butter. The
Colchester baker Arthur Condore was presented for selling underweight loaves.84
Rude,
7' Rude, Crowd in History, 224-5;
Paris and London, 289; Davis, 'Rites of violence', 54, 78-8I. Though we should note
Davis's warning that in so far as Catholic and
Protestant popular violence in sixteenthcentury France was concerned, 'the overall
picture in these urban religious riots is not one
of the " people " slaying the rich'. She
suggests that socio-economic conflict was
more likely in peasant risings.
78 Rude, Crowd in History, 255.
7" Life of Thomas Ellwood, 78-9; Swarthmore MS. v, 93.
"" Essex Record Office (hereafter E.R.O.),
T/A 465/2 (Colchester Borough Records:
Examinations and Recognizances I 646-87), 2 I
June I654, November I675.
81 A. B. Anderson, 'A study in the sociology
of religious persecution: the first quakers',
Journal of Religious History, ix (I977), 256.
82 See Reay, 'Social origins of early Quaker-

ism', 69-72; Vann, 'Quakerism and the


social structure', 87; Minute Book of the Men's
Meeting of the Society of Friends in Bristol,
xxviii.
83 For hostility to middlemen, see R. B.
Westerfield, Middlemen in English Business
(Yale, I 9 I 5), 126-7; E. P. Thompson, 'The
moral economy of the English crowd', Past
and Present, L (I 971), 76-1 36; J. Walter and K.
Wrightson, 'Dearth and the social order in
early modern England', Past and Present, LXXI
(I 976), 22-42.
84 Hertfordshire
Rec. Office (hereafter
H.R.O.), Q.S.M.B. (Quarter Sessions Minute
Book), 4/4I;
Bedfordshire County Records...
Sessions Minute Books I65I to i66o (Bedford,
n.d.), I4; E.R.O., Q/SR (Quarter Sessions
Rolls), 396/9, 397/I4;
E.R.O., T/A 465/34
(Colchester Borough Records: Sessions
Rolls), i654/5.

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OctoberI980

403

Hostility towards Quakers

When the Quaker Thomas Bush, a Sawbridgeworth maltster, was assaulted in i 659

by men armedwith swords,clubs,staffsandknives,it wasnot becauseof his faith


but becausehe hadused a falsestricklefor measuringgrain.Whenthe Colchester
merchant John Furly was attacked during the weavers' riot of i 657 it was because

he had been 'selling ye Cornout of ye land' duringa time of dearth.85There is


no evidenceat this stage that other membersof the movementwere affectedby
the 'middleman'stigma,as would happenin the eighteenthcenturywhen food
rioters attacked Quaker meeting houses because Quaker millers and corn factors
had been engrossing and forestalling corn."6

Finally,therearehintsof someloosekindof organizationin lower-classactions,


perhaps a vague foreshadowing of the 'Skeleton Armies' of the nineteenth century,
formed by members of the working class to combat the activities of the Salvation
Army.8' The weaver Samuel Wilde said that he frequented 'loose Societies and
Clubbs' who encouraged him to bait the Quakers.88 But in this case, as with the
students, anti-Quaker activity seems to have been mixed with drunkenness and
revelry, though obviously this tells us little of the original motivations.
The motives of the second group of assailants, the youths and apprentices, are
equally difficult to determine. Both seem to have featured in attacks against the
sect: in Bristol in I654, in Dover in I658, in London in I659 and in London,
Bristol, Norwich, Cambridge and Wales in i66o during the backlash at the return
of Charles 11.89 We have seen of course that much of this hostility was political.
Then there was what Walsh has referred to as the hooligan element; the boys who
attacked the Quaker meeting in London's Vine Street in I 659, for example, were
said to have been plied with drink.90 But these are not the only answers.
We know most about the apprentice riots in Bristol in I 654 and i 66o. The unrest
which began on I8 December I654, lasting with sporadic outbursts into January
I655, was aimed solely at Quakers. A crowd said to be about 1500 strong took to
the streets, attacking meetings and the homes of Quaker shopkeepers and
merchants; and a petition, demanding the removal of Quakers from the city, was
presented to the council. The situation was complicated. The apprentices drew
upon a natural reservoir of anti-military feeling, feeling that had intensified with
the Bristol garrison's blatant support of the Quaker movement during the sect's
early days in the city. And there were the predictable cries for Charles Stuart. But
for the purposes of our argument, three factors emerge: first, the allegations that
the Bristol authorities supported the apprentices, if not actively then at least
tacitly; second, the claim that Presbyterian ministers had incited the boys; third,
85
H.R.O., Q.S.M.B., 3/377, 388; E.R.O.,
T/A 465/2, November I675.
86 Thompson, 'Moral economy', 95, n. 62;
W. C. Braithwaite, The Second Period of
Quakerism (Cambridge, I96I edn), 564, n. 4.
87 See V. Bailey, 'Salvation Army riots, the
"Skeleton Army" and legal authority in the
provincial town', in A. P. Donajgrodzki (ed.),
Social Control in Nineteenth Century Britain
(1977), 23I-53.

88
89

Wilde, The Last legacy (1703), 2.


British Library, Add MS. 29624 (Depo-

S.

sitions before the Mayor of Dover

1630-59),

377-9; 'Great Book of Sufferings', 1i,


London, 3; Life of Thomas Ellwood, 78-9;
W. C. Braithwaite, The Beginningsof Quakerism
(Cambridge, 1970 edn), 474; Besse, Collection,
i, 87-8, 742.
90 'Great Book of Sufferings',

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1x, 3.

404

Social

History

VOL 5: NO 3

the report that the apprentices had the approval of their masters.9' The trouble
in February I66o was different. It was not aimed specifically at Quakers but was
part of a more general reaction against decaying trade and the unrest of I659 (an
essential ingredient in the counter-revolutionary activity which heralded the
eventual downfall of the Rump Parliament and the return of the secluded members
and, ultimately, Charles II). Again the apprentices took to the streets; only this
time they called for a free parliament and the preservation of the 'distressed
Church', and condemned the heavy taxes which had been imposed upon their
masters. But Quakers were attacked during the riots. They were forced to shut
their shops. Some were threatened with death if they attempted to meet. They were
generally treated pretty roughly.92
Why did the apprentices act? The role of their masters cannot be ignored
because they crop up in both episodes - though it should be noted that in I66o
some apprentices were beating their masters and forcing them to shut up shop,
presumably as a form of enforced collective strike action. Likewise we should note
the part played by Presbyterians; in fact in both I654 and i66o the apprentices
were supporting the Presbyterian interest - the 'distressed Church'. It would of
course be good to know exactly what sort of apprentices were attacking Quakers.
Apprentices were a heterogeneous lot, sons of the gentry and yeomanry downwards
and not strictly speaking of the 'inferior set' or 'lower orders', the categories into
which Rude has rather carelessly lumped them.93 Nearly 30 per cent of merchant
apprentices in Bristol in the seventeenth century, for example, came from gentry
families.94 So we do not know whether they were acting as wage earners or the
sons of the gentry. The little work that has been done, however, does suggest that
youth groups and apprentices saw themselves as the custodians of social morality,
and that they were ready to act as such against deviant behaviour, either by ridicule
(charivaris) or by more direct means.95 As Davis has shown, boys and youths in
91 My account of the riots is based on J.
Latimer, The Annals of Bristol in the Seventeenth Century (Bristol, 1900), 256-7; G.
Bishop et al., The Cry of Blood and Herod
(I656),
I4-I5,
i6, 27-3I;
Bishop, The
Throneof Truth Exalted ( 657),
6
57; W. Sewel,
The History of the Rise, Increase, and Progress
of... Quakers (1722), 84-5; Bristol Rec. Office
(hereafter B.R.O.), 'Orders of Mayor and
Aldermen I653-I660', fo. I2V.
92 A Letter of the Apprentices of the City of
Bristol (I66o), passim; B.R.O., 'Common
Council Proceedings I659-I675', 12; Swarthmore MS. Iv, 134. The Bristol apprentices
were in touch with their London counterparts,
who, according to the Quaker Edward
Burrough, were firmly identified with the
anti-sectarian, priestly interest: [E. Burrough],
A Presentation to London (I659), 4.
'3 D. V. Glass, 'Socio-economic status and
occupations in the City of London at the

end of the seventeenth century', in A. E. J.


Hollaender and W. Kellaway (eds), Studies
in London History (I969), 387-8; S. R. Smith,
'The social and geographical origins of the
London apprentices, I630-I 66o', Guildhall
Miscellany, Iv (I973), 195-206. For Rude, see
Paris and London,299; Rude, Crowdin History,
205,

207.

See P. McGrath (ed.), Merchants and


Merchandise in Seventeenth-Century Bristol
(Bristol Rec. Soc., XIV, 1955), 276-7.
'l See S. R. Smith, 'The London apprentices as seventeenth-century adolescents',
Past and Present, LXI (I973),
I57, i61; B.
Capp, 'English youth groups', Past and
Davis, 'Rites
Present, LXXVI (I977), I27-33;
of violence', 87-8; N. Z. Davis, 'The reasons
of misrule: youth groups and charivaris in
sixteenth-century France', Past and Present, L
B. Scribner, 'Reformation,
(I971),
41-75;
carnival and the world turned upside-down',
94

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October Ig80

Hostility towards Quakers

405

sixteenth-century France were allowed considerable licence in both youth-abbeys


and religious riot; they were 'the conscience of the community in matters of
domestic discord',96 The London apprentices, Smith tells us, were uniquely wellorganized, seeing themselves 'as moral agents, defending the right, whether it
were the "right" Protestant religion, or the "right" behaviour of London's
prostitutes, who were frequent targets of apprentice riots'.,, Perhaps then it was
as guardians not only of social morality but of the social order (as well as the 'right
Religion') that the bands of apprentices and groups of youths took to the streets
against the quarrelsome and socially disruptive Quakers.98 This might also account
for the allegations of official complicity and for the role of masters and ministers.
Motives must remain speculative and vague. But what is clear is that outside
direction, what E. P. Thompson has described as the mob under 'magistrate's
licence', was an important feature of crowd attacks on the early Quakers.99 Again
and again there are allegations of official involvement and complicity: in Sussex
in I657 and I658; in Cornwall, Hertfordshire and Nottinghamshire in I659; in
Cambridge in i 66o.100When Quakers were attacked in Bath in the I 65os they were
told by one of their assailants that 'John Bigg the Mayor ... bad them
beat ... Friends out of Town, because they were Quakers'.101 In Bristol in 1654,
though they issued orders for them to return to their homes, the local authorities
made little effort to disperse the apprentices. It was even rumoured that one
alderman, George Hellier, had said he would 'spend his blood, and lose his life
before any of the Rioters should go to Prison'. When the troops eventually acted
it seems to have been an unilateral decision.102 When Quakers were set upon by
a mob in Liskeard in Cornwall in I 659, 'some of the Rabble were Men of Figure,
and one a Magistrate of the Town'.103 As Thompson has pointed out, mobs could
Social History,

III (1978),

303-29.

Quakers do

not seem to have been the subjects of charivaris.


There does not even seem to have been the
Quaker equivalent of the seventeenth-century
Pope-burning procession (see 0. W. Furley,
'The Pope-burning processions of the late
seventeenth century', History, XLIV (1959),
i6-23).
Popular antagonism (or derision) just
does not appear to have taken this form.
96 Davis, 'Rites of violence', 87-8.
i Smith, 'London apprentices as seventeenth-century adolescents', i6i.
98 In a curious episode in the parish of
Peasmarsh in Sussex in I657 a Quaker was
invited to a house by two youths and some
young women. He was overpowered by the
men, his trousers were lowered, and he was
beaten by the women - with a three-foot rod.
Quite probably I am reading too much into the
affair, but is it possible that he was being
punished for stepping outside the bounds of
community convention by turning Quaker?
The punishment does appear somewhat ritual-

istic and it seems significant that the Quaker


was apparently beaten by women and not the
youths who seem to have retired discreetly. It
is also interesting that the episode may have
had more respectable sanctions: it was said to
have been organized by a 'Rich man of the
Towne'. See E.S.R.O., SOF 5/I, 19.
'9 E. P. Thompson, The Making of the
English Working Class (I968 edn), 74, 79-80.

See also R. B. Rose, 'The Priestly Riots of


179I',
Past and Present, xviii (I960), 68-88;
Walsh, 'Methodism and the mob', 2i6-i8;
and Bailey, 'Salvation Army riots', 243 ff.
100 Besse, Collection, i, 87-8; E.S.R.O.,
SOF 5/I, 27-8; Reay, 'Quakers, I 659, and the
Restoration', 2o6, 209.
101 T. Morford, The Cry of Oppression
(I659), I8-I9.
102 B.R.O., 'Orders of Mayor and Aldermen
I653-I660',
fo. I2V; Bishop, Cry of Blood,
29-3

I.

Sufferings of Quakers in Cornwall, 23-4;


Besse, Collection, I, 115-I6.
103

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Social

406

VOL 5: NO 3

History

be extremely useful in an age without police forces. They could act for the status
quo against intruders, disrupters, radicals. When George Rofe disrupted a church
service which was attended by the mayor of Hithe (Kent), the mayor did not call
for his officers but merely turned a blind eye while the Quaker was removed from
the church and beaten severely by obliging 'vile fellows of ye rude multitude'. 104
The threat of popular action may also have been convenient for the mayor of
Macclesfield (Cheshire) in I658. He warned visiting Quakers to leave his town,
'for ye maior said yt ye rud people of ye towne was redy to fall upon us & he Could
not rule them'.*106 It was the same sort of symbiotic relationship as that which
existed between rulers and ruled in times of dearth when middlemen became
targets of mutual recrimination. Providing that it did not overstep the bounds, the
mob could be a force for stability, and could be used against the Quakers (as
radicals) much in the way that it was to be employed against the English Jacobins
in the 1790S.'06
Just as the local community had organized itself (as Clubmen) against outsiders
in the 1640s,107 it rallied against the Quaker threat. And mobilization was often
directed, and occasionally led, by a local minister. It was from the pulpit that the
anti-Quaker and anti-sectarian paranoia was whipped up in I659. It was ministers
who were preaching
yt Religion was in dainger, and yt whatsoever was undertaken was onely agst
Quakers and those who would destroy ye Ministry, and moving and exhorting
ale men for to take up armes as for Gods own cause, and used that Text of
Scripture Curse yee Merosh &c.
It was ministers who were suggesting that if St Paul had been alive he would have
stoned Quakers, and that 'if the Lawes were right, they would chop off all the
Quakers' heads'. 08 Again there are similarities to religious riot in France a century
earlier.'09 We get the familiar ringing of church bells or beating of drums to rally
resistance. In Crayke (Yorkshire) in I653 it was the minister who organized
resistance to the sect. The signal to rise was the tolling of the steeple bell,
whereupon townspeople armed with clubs fell upon the Quakers. 'Corrupt
Magistracies doe winke at the Evill doers', complained the Quaker Thomas
Aldam.1"0When in I657 members of the sect entered an unidentified market town
in Sussex, a drum was beaten and the 'Barbarous rude people... Came marching
up to the house Like men ready for battle'."' It was also to the beat of the drum
that a mob armed with guns, clubs and staffs besieged a Quaker meeting in Broad
Cerne in Dorset in x66o."12
104

105

K.A.O., CP/BP 125.


Swarthmore MS. iv, i6.

106 For

Jacobins,

see

Thompson,

09 See Davis, 'Rites of violence', 66-9.

110 A. R. Barclay MSS. 14, 17. Priests led


The

Making of the English Working Class, 122-3.


107 See Morrill, Revolt of
Provinces, 104.
108 Reay, 'Quakers, 1659, and the Restoration', 207, 204.

attacks on Quaker meetings in Liverpool and


Somerset: 'Great Book of Sufferings', 1, 56I;
Swarthmore MS. 111, I63.
i Swarthmore MS. I,
112

D.R.O., NIo/AI5,

315.

1.

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October I980

Hostility towards Quakers

407

To summarize, popular animosity was a mixture of xenophobia, class hatred,


ignorance and a superstition that merged with the world of witchcraft. It was
stimulated and encouraged by indoctrinating anti-Quakerpropagandaand by the
behaviour of Friends themselves. Quakerswere hated as political radicals,as social
and religious deviants, and in some cases as economic middlemen. In a sense, then,
and paradoxically, the Quakers were a force for order. Despite the fulminations
of those in power, fears that the Quakers would turn the world upside down, the
sect's mere existence drew people together in defence of 'right' behaviour and
a reaffirmationof traditional values. Friends, in short, were a catalyst for popular
traditionalism.
Hartley College of Advanced
Education,Magill, South Australia

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