SOME QUAKER LETTERS.*

Is' the readers of A Quaker Post-bag feel any curiosity as to the character of Sir John Bodes, to whom most of the letters are addressed, they have great reason to be grateful to Thomas Storey. In his Journal Mr. Bissell, who contributes a preface to Mrs. Locker Lampson's book, has found a" subtle estimate" of Sir John's "reserved and elusive personality." From this we learn that he "was convinced when young and held his integrity through many temptations." What these tempta- tions were we are not told ; but they are probably explained by his social position. Since his time Quaker Baronets have ceased to be rarities ; but in the early years of the eighteenth century Sir John Rodes had neither parallel nor predecessor. His mother was a woman of remarkable strength and persistence of character, and his conversion was probably in a great measure her work. With his father she was not equally successful; but though he did not become a Quaker in name, his wife seems to have been satisfied that he was one in heart. "I doe believe," she writes to her son, "he came to witness and Experience the sweetness of trusting & depending upon the God of his salvation and I am satisfied he is at rest in the Ld." But the avowed adhesion to the Quakers of a person of position and title was an event of great import- ance to the little community, and Lady nodes may well have been unwilling to encourage her son in mixing with his natural associates.

When the post-bag is opened Sir John is living in London, and his mother's first letter shows the anxiety which his leaving home has caused her. "My Dr Innocent and Pretious Babe," she writes, "Thou art my Chiefest Earthly Comfort, the desire of my hart and delight of my Eyes, my son in whom I take pleasure and bless the God of my life for his Mercyes in giving me such A son." Sir John's first letter assures her that he is quite willing to return home again ; but the dangers of the journey make her anxious that he should "forecast to have company down." Even company was not always an assurance of safety, for we read that her brother who has just come home was robbed twenty miles out of London. "He was in a Hackney Coach, and their

was 3 men besides him and one woman, and they robed them all, and their came A gentleman and his man by, whilst they was searching of them, es they fell upon them & robed them also." In justice to the thieves, it should be added that they appear to have been willing to consider any reasonable request, and not to have rejected it without cause shown. They—the victims—" would A per- swaded them to A left them something to A born their Charges, but the thiefes Answered & said : such Gentlemen as they had credit upon the road." Journeys between Staffordshire and London seem to have been the main interruptions to Sir John Rodes's uneventful career, and in a letter from William Penn written in 1697 there is some faithful speaking on the inactivity Of his disciple's life :— " The proverb isWise : Use leggs and have them. Gett abroad, & mix with liveing friends and thou wilt feel an encrease in thy

• A Qraker Port-be. Selected and Edited by him Godfrey Locker Lampoon. With Preface by Augustine Birrell. London: Longmans and Co. L8s. 6d. notO . bosom% & it will engage thee more in an universall spirit & • generall service. The Lord that found thee out and called thee, intended thee other work than to spend thy youth, the cream of thy time, in a retired unconcerned silence. It does not fill up thy caling nor quality. Thy outward Character, as a man, and thy service in the Church are in too great a disproportion, we have bitter adversarys, and want helpers."

Evidently their one Baronet was not held to be doing his duty by the Quaker community.

The exhortation to "mix with liveing friends" may have been prompted by regret for the extent to which the disciple had followed an earlier counsel. In 1693 Penn had prescribed a course of life, and suggested the formation

of a library. He advised Sir John to divide his time into four parts :—"1/4 to Religion, in Waiting, Reading, Meditating, &c. th to some General! study. V, to some Bodily Labour as Gardening, or some ktathematicall Exercise. V, to serve friends or neighbours or look after my

Estate." The list of books recommended is a long and, as coming from a Quaker, a remarkable one. Thus "For devotion, the Scriptures, Friends' Epistles, Austin his City of God, his Soliloquies, Thom a Kempis, Bona, a late piece called Unum Necessarium, and a Voyce crying out of the Wilderness writt in Q Elizabeth's time." Next to religion political history has the largest place in Penn's list. "For Policy, above all Books, the Bible, that is, the Old Testamt writings, Thucydides, Tacitus, Council of Trent, Machieval, Thyanus, Grotius's Annals." For English history he recom- mends Daniel, Trussel, Bacon's Life of Henry VII, Lord Herbert's Life of Henry VIII, Camden's Elizabeth, More's Utopia, and "the Pamphlets since the Reformation pro et

con. to be had at the Acorn in Paul's yard, to be bound up together, comprisable in about 6 quarto vollumes." Rush-

wolth's Collections "are not unusefull, being particular and our own History, and the best since 30 wch is the chiefeat time of Action." He adds one more, the Memorials of the English Affairs, "by the Lord Whitlock, a great man, and who dyed a confessor to Truth," and assures his correspondent that "for the Main Body of a Study" these will be "sufficient and very accomplyshing." We have left out of this list the books relating to religious controversies, to ecclesiastical history, and to general and classical biography, but enough have been named to supply a possible explanation of Sir John Rodes's retired habits. Besides his evident indisposition to take a prominent part in the management of Quaker business, his friends had cause to regret his repeated refusals to entertain any thought of providing an heir to the Quaker baronetcy :—

" He never married," says Storey, "having a great aversion to all that was wanton, light or vain, and being of nice sentiments, both as to vertue, temper, education and Parts, all these (as I suppose) he has not found to concur so perfectly in any one agree- able person as both to please the Delicacy of his own judgment and suit the good likings of his friends, which probably may have rendered his life less satisfactory, having for the most part little agreeable society."

It is a picture in very subdued colours of a shy and diffident

young man who knew what he dreaded more clearly than what he wanted, and, while finding little that he cared for in his own Communion, was sufficiently assured of its precepts to have no mind to look for companionship beyond its pale. In the former respect be was less fortunate than another Quaker convert, Edmund Waller, the second son of the poet, of whom we read that he has been visited with a concern to inquire after truth, and has been at several meetings. "I am in a concern for his perseverance," writes Henry Goulding, a chief contributor to the Post-bag, "being in hopes, he may lead the way to a further openness among psons of his rancle Waller seems to have been attracted by

the enthusiasm of Quakerism, and the solitary letter from him that is printed in this volume reaches a high level of

mystical eloquence :—

" Washt in the Heavenly Enridanus, her golden streams will transforme and regenerate us to what man was before the fall when God himself communed with him. Then shall there need nee Law, when Love has so united man to God, that his owne will being lost, he has no other will but God's will. Then will the same living Streams flow in Earth as in Heaven, and Praise, Songs, Hosanahs, and Halilujahs proclaim Peace and Joy Eternal. This is the Philosopher's Stone this is the perpetual motion, supplied by God who is the Everlasting fountain° of Blisse the Sunimum Bonum, that turns all soules into his own Devine Essence."

\There are frequent references in these letters to a certain

George Keith, who appears to have left the Friends for some other Nonconformist body, and to have become an active and hostile controversialist. He was not, however, a very for- midable adversary, for we find him silenced by "a witty e,obler," who asked him whether the Spirit dictated the Scriptares or the Scriptures the Spirit. To this George Keith "made no answer but that he did not take him to be so cunning a fellow." A new tract "for outward supper and Baptisme," written by him, is described as having "done more service for Truth than hurt, for many weak People up and down the country are now thereby convinced that he is further backsliden and Apostatised in respect to Doctrine than they apprehended him to be." In the end George Keith goes to his own place and conforms to the Established Church. There, however, he only "serves for a jest":---.

"Even whilst he is in the pulpit, there is such a murmur with the secret talking and observation of his hearers, together with their dumb notices and laughter, that many could not hear him, so that we may observe from the saying of our Lord, when salt has lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted."

George Keith himself might possibly have told a different tale. At least in the same letter we find the writer admitting that he has muddled the minds of many weak persons. Still, of the "great conversion in Huntingdonsheere " of which

George Keith boasted, one J. Everad says that there are "but 4 who was in unity with itrds who have gone to Steeplehouse."

Throughout the period covered by this correspondence the Friends appear to have been actively engaged in theological disputes. As their position became more assured they were possibly more disposed to rest content with the converts they

had made, and thus furnished materials for that singularly attractive picture of them which Scott draws in Reagauntlet. To one feature of this time of conflict Mr. Birrell draws attention :— "Marriage was only to be had within the walls of tho Establishment. All other Nonconformists wishing to wed, went to Church, at least once in their lives fearing bastardy for their offspring. The Quakers feared nothing, did not go to Church, kept their own Registers, and made it a matter of religion never to die intestate."

It was not, indeed, till sixty years after the date of the first letter printed in this volume that their marriages were held

valid in law ; but more orthodox, and less scrupulous, Non- conformists bad to wait a good deal longer for a similar

recognition. The Friends, it must be supposed, were seldom holders of entailed land, and their habit of making wills protected them against the other inconveniences of technical

illegitimacy. Mrs. Locker Lampson gives a facsimile of a Quaker marriage certificate setting out that Peter Achlom and Elizabeth Heathcote "appeared in a I:Niblick Assembly

of the People of God called Quakers," and then and there taking each other by the hand promised to be the one a faithful and loving husband and the other a faithful, loving, and obedient wife until death. Over thirty witnesses subscribe their names as being present at the solemnising of the said marriage, and the validity of this and other unions contracted in similar fashion seems never to have been challenged.

In a variety of ways A Quaker Post-bag is one of those unpretending contributions to the byways of ecclesiastical history which are often found of unexpected value to later writers. We could have wished, indeed, for a few more notes on the writers of the letters, and on some of the incidents mentioned in them. A correspondent of the Westminster Gazette has pointed out that something more was due to the

hapless Sarah Stout than the bare statement that she was " drownd in a River." Seldom has hopeless love been the cause of a more famous tragedy. The object of the young Quaker's passion was Spencer Cowper, and, as he had had to see her on business just before her suicide, be was charged with her murder. Quakers and Tories combined to assert his guilt, but as the entire absence of evidence made a con- viction impossible, what Macaulay terms "the disappointed sect and the disappointed faction" could do nothing but "calumniate those whom it _had been found impossible to murder." They did not prevent Spencer Cowper from becoming a Judge, but they gained their more immediate,

and perhaps dearer, object in unseating his brother at the next election.