BOOKS.
THE LIFE OF THOMAS ELLWOOD.*
EVERYBODY knows this much about Thomas Ellwood, that be was a Quaker who as a young man read to Milton in his blindness, as he is represented in Horsley's picture; that he found a "pretty box" for him at Chalfont, in Buckingham- shire, to retire to during the Plague; and that he was per- mitted to read Paradise Lost in manuscript, and suggested to the poet the subject of his second epic. But it would hardly have contented Ellwood that his name should have no more substantive title to remembrance than this. For he was a poet himself, and was readily moved on occasion to ease his spirit in verse. He was also a keen controversialist, and broke many a lance with "Episcopal priests" and Baptists and dissentient Friends. But truth compels the acknowledgment that his "Deceit Discovered and Malice Manifested" is as dead as his "pathetic elegy by way of acrostic on the death of that dear and faithful servant of God, Edward Burrough." What still lives, and must ever keep an honoured place among the autobiographies and diaries with which the seventeenth century enriched our literature, is the book in which, with admirable sincerity, he has drawn the picture of a typical young Englishman of the well-to-do classes who fell under the influence of Quaker teaching, and fought and suffered for the "Truth."
The interest of his " History " is very great both for its picture of the times and as a study in religious psychology. In these days when philosophers write treatises on the phenomena of conversion, even the plain man observes with a wondering interest how the direct inspiration of God may in such circumstances be claimed for ideas which are as human as anything can be, as soon as conscience becomes moved about them. Ellwood attends a few meetings at the house of his father's friend, Isaac Pennington, who had joined the new Society. Then the divine Light begins to shine in him, and his understanding opens, and at last he finds "the Truth." And what is the truth that he finds ? It is "the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus," of which St. Paul speaks, issuing categorical orders to him to give up (1) lace, ribands, and useless buttons ; (2) flattering titles of men, such as Sir, Master, My Lord, Madam; (3) respect of persons in uncovering the head ; (4) the corrupt and unsound form of speaking in the plural number to a single person, contrary to the pure, plain, and single language of truth, which had always been used by God to men and men to God. "These and many more evil customs," he says, "which had sprang up in the night of darkness and general apostacy from the TRUTH and true religion, were now by the inshining of this pure ray of divine light in my conscience gradually discovered to me to be what I ought to cease from, shun, and stand a witness against." As we study to-day this queer list of "evil customs," we realise with our more intelligent reading of Scripture what short work St. Paul would have made of it if the sect had arisen in Ephesus or Antioch; but we realise no less clearly how good it was for England in the hypocritical days of the Commonwealth and the profligate days of the Restoration, that conscience, however ill-instructed, should have been once more exalted as the guide of human life, and that men should have been found willing to acknowledge anything as "the Truth," and suffer for it.
* Tits History ofthe TAfe of Thomas =wood. Eclite4 by S. Grnmeson. London: R I y Brothers. [1.0s,notj
Not the least interesting part of the autobiography is the description of the searchings of heart the young Ellwood went through as to the application of his principles in his carriage towards his own father. At first he convinced him- self that a particular respect to him in gesture and language was covered by the Fifth Commandment. Then conscience directed that the true honour due to parents lay in a ready obedience. And so one day, on returning from the Penning- tons', he appeared in his father's presence, hat on head, and with the message: "Isaac Pennington and his wife remember
their loves to thee," which was the first scene in a long struggle between the choleric squire and his masterful son, in which neither showed to advantage. Ellwood senior settled the question of " hat-honour " by cutting off the supply of bate ; bat he could establish no control over the offensive pronoun. One feels that if Thomas Ellwood's conscience had allowed him to talk over this business of "thou" and "yore with "my maeter Milton," he might have saved the Society of Friends,
with whom he had great influence, from one of their least reasonable, and to the world in general most annoying, peculiarities.
The Quakers were frequently in trouble, and so we learn a great deal from Ellwood's history about the manners of country Justices and constables in the seventeenth century. There is a certain Justice Benett who took advantage of the Conventicle Act, prohibiting meetings, to interrupt a Quaker funeral, throw the coffin into the street from the bearers' shoulders, and send ten of the mourners to gaol for "unlawful assembling themselves together under pretence of a religious worship not authorised by the laws of this land." There was Justice Clark, who remarked pleasantly to Ellwood that if the King would authorise him, he would not leave a Quaker in England. He would set his pistol to their ears and shoot them through the head. Others, like Justice Titchborn and Justice Fotherley, who happened to know the Penns or the Penningtons, dis- criminated a little more clearly between Quakers and dogs. There is a scene at Beaconsfield with the constables which reads like a study after Dogberry and Verges, and another at Maidenhead with the Warden, "a budge old man," with whom Ellwood has an argument as to the relevance of the Fourth Commandment to Sunday travelling. No less vivid are the pictures of the prisons of the time, Newgate and Bridewell. One of the more startling of the incidents connected with them is the manner of summoning a Coroner's jury when a prisoner dies :—
" As soon as the Coroner is come, the Turnkeys run out into the street under the gate, and seize upon every man that passes by, till they have got enough to make up the Coroner's inquest. And so resolute these rude fellows are that if any man resist, or dispute it with them, they drag him in by main force, not regarding what condition he is of. Nay, I have been told they will not stick to stop a coach, and pluck the men out of it."
On the occasion when Ellwood saw this done the turnkeys got more than they bargained for, in the shape of a "grave citizen," who, being brought in against his will, though be pleaded very urgent business, insisted on the inspection of the room where the prisoner died, to the great annoyance of the Coroner, and reported it to the Mayor as insanitary. Whereupon the Quaker prisoners were divided and half of them sent to Bridewell, being allowed to walk there through the streets without a keeper, on their word not to run away.
Undoubtedly the most disagreeable reading in the book is
the accusation made against the clergy of abetting the informers who hunted up Diesenters' meetings for the sake of the third part of the fines which the Conventicle Act allowed them. The accusation is made in general terms, so that one may hope it rested rather upon suspicion than proof ; but Peter Mews, afterwards Bishop of Winchester, seems to have been concerned in the miadoings of the notorious John Poulter. Two other informers, who assumed that a Quaker
would necessarily be at a certain meeting because they bad seen him there on a previous occasion, were successfully prosecuted by Ellwood for wilful perjury. The reader is delighted at the punishment of the rogues, but puzzled at the vagaries of a conscience which refused to take the oath of allegiance on the ground that the Sermon on the Mount pro- hibited oaths, and saw no prohibition about going to law in the verses that follow.
The volume contains extracts from Joseph Wyeth's supple- ment, and some useful appendices and illustrations.
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