"A QUAKER POST-BAG."
[To TIER EDITOR Or TIER "EPECTATOR."11 SIR,—I have before me your interesting review in last week's issue of "A Quaker Post-bag," in which, however, there are one or two points which seem to require correction. The reviewer states that the validity of Quaker marriages appears never to have been challenged. It was challenged on various OCCAS1011.9, and the legitimacy and recognition of early Quaker marriages rested for a long time upon results of cases tried in the Law Courts. Perhaps the most celebrated and important of these was the Ashwell case, tried at Nottingham Assizes in 1661 (we have records of several other cases). Briefly, William Ashwell, who was married in 1658, died intestate, leaving an infant heiress, Mary. He left a copyhold estate of inheritance not settled in his lifetime. Mary was presented to the Manor Court and accepted by the tenants as heiress-at-law, and admitted tenant to her father's hereditary estates. Soon after John .Ashwell, being next-of-kin to William other than Mary, tried to deprive the infant child of her estates. The case was tried before Justice Archer, both sides being represented by counsel. The summing up of the Judge was distinctly in favour of the legitimacy of the marriage, the jury found in favour of the defendant, and little Mary Ashwell continued in peaceable possession of her father's inheritance through her guardian, but she herself died at the age of twelve years. Many of the early Friends were landed proprietors, and the possession of entailed estates was probably not uncommon.
A few words should perhaps be said with regard to your mention of the tragic death of Sarah Stout, and the words quoted from Macaulay respecting it. It should be remembered that that truly eminent historian seemed unable to write any- thing respecting the Society of Friends without showing his exceedingly strong bias against it. With regard to the state- ment as to the entire absence of evidence, it is perhaps only fair to say that the Judge, in his charge to the jury, said : "You have heard a very long evidence." Further, he stated that he was "very much puzzled," and "at a loss to find out what inducement there could be" to the defendants "to commit such a horrid barbarous murder "; and he could not, on the other hand, "imagine what there should be to induce this gentlewoman, a person of a plentiful fortune and of a very sober reputation, to destroy herself." The defendants were acquitted by the jury after an absence of about half-an-hour.---I am, Sir, &c.,
ISAAC SHARP, Secretary of the Society of Friends, Devonshire House, 12 Bishopsgate Without, E.C.
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