several days, during which they attended a meeting, in a neighboring
farmhouse, where we are introduced by Ellwood to two remarkable
personages, Edward Burrough, the friend and fearless reprover of
Cromwell, and by far the most eloquent preacher of his sect and James
Nayler, whose melancholy after-history of fanaticism, cruel sufferings,
and beautiful repentance, is so well known to the readers of English
history under the Protectorate. Under the preaching of these men, and
the influence of the Pennington family, young Ellwood was brought into
fellowship with the Quakers. Of the old Justice's sorrow and indignation
at this sudden blasting of his hopes and wishes in respect to his son,
and of the trials and difficulties of the latter in his new vocation, it
is now scarcely worth while to speak. Let us step forward a few years,
to 1662, considering meantime how matters, political and spiritual, are
changed in that brief period. Cromwell, the Maccabeus of Puritanism, is
no longer among men; Charles the Second sits in his place; profane and
licentious cavaliers have thrust aside the sleek-haired, painful-faced
Independents, who used to groan approval to the Scriptural illustrations
of Harrison and Fleetwood; men easy of virtue, without sincerity, either
in religion or politics, occupying the places made honorable by the
Miltons, Whitlocks, and Vanes of the Commonwealth. Having this change in
view, the light which the farthing candle of Ellwood sheds upon one of
these illustrious names will not be unwelcome. In his intercourse with
Penn, and other learned Quakers, he had reason to lament his own
deficiencies in scholarship, and his friend Pennington undertook to put
him in a way of remedying the defect.
"He had," says Ellwood, "an intimate acquaintance with Dr. Paget, a
physician of note in London, and he with John Milton, a gentleman of
great note for learning throughout the learned world, for the accurate
pieces he had written on various subjects and occasions.
"This person, having filled a public station in the former times, lived a
private and retired life in London, and, having lost his sight, kept
always a man to read for him, which usually was the son of some gentleman
of his acquaintance, whom, in kindness, he took to improve in his
learning.
"Thus, by the mediation of my friend Isaac Pennington with Dr. Paget, and
through him with John Milton, was I admitted to come to him, not as a
servant to him, nor to be in the house with him, but only to have the
liberty of coming to his house at certain hours when I would, and read to
him what books he should appoint, which was all the favor I desired.
"He received me courteously, as well for the sake of Dr. Paget, who
introduced me, as of Isaac Pennington, who recommended me, to both of
whom he bore a good respect. And, having inquired divers things of me,
with respect to my former progression in learning, he dismissed me, to
provide myself with such accommodations as might be most suitable to my
studies.
"I went, therefore, and took lodgings as near to his house (which was
then in Jewen Street) as I conveniently could, and from thenceforward
went every day in the afternoon, except on the first day of the week,
and, sitting by him in his dining-room, read to him such books in the
Latin tongue as he pleased to have me read.
"He perceiving with what earnest desire I had pursued learning, gave me
not only all the encouragement, but all the help he could. For, having a
curious ear, he understood by my tone when I understood what I read and
when I did not, and accordingly would stop me, examine me, and open the
most difficult passages to me."
Thanks, worthy Thomas, for this glimpse into John Milton's dining-room!
He had been with "Master Milton," as he calls him, only a few weeks,
when, being one "first day morning," at the Bull and Mouth meeting,
Aldersgate, the train-bands of the city, "with great noise and clamor,"
headed by Major Rosewell, fell upon him and his friends. The immediate
cause of this onslaught upon quiet worshippers was the famous plot of the
Fifth Monarchy men, grim old fanatics, who (like the Millerites of the
present day) had been waiting long for the personal reign of Christ and
the saints upon earth, and in their zeal to hasten such a consummation
had sallied into London streets with drawn swords and loaded matchlocks.
The government took strong measures for suppressing dissenters' meetings
or "conventicles;" and the poor Quakers, although not at all implicated
in the disturbance, suffered more severely than any others. Let us look
at the "freedom of conscience and worship" in England under that
irreverent Defender of the Faith, Charles II. Ellwood says: "He that
commanded the party gave us first a general charge to come out of the
room. But we, who came thither at God's requiring to worship Him, (like
that good man of old, who said, we ought to obey God rather than man,)
stirred not, but kept our places. Whereupon, he sent some of his
soldiers among us, with command to drag or drive us out, which they did
roughly enough." Think of it: grave men and women, and modest maidens,
sitting there with calm, impassive countenances, motionless as death, the
pikes of the soldiery closing about them in a circle of bristling steel!
Brave and true ones! Not in vain did ye thus oppose God's silence to the
Devil's uproar; Christian endurance and calm persistence in the exercise
of your rights as Englishmen and men to the hot fury of impatient
tyranny! From your day down to this, the world has been the better for
your faithfulness.
Ellwood and some thirty of his friends were marched off to prison in Old
Bridewell, which, as well as nearly all the other prisons, was already
crowded with Quaker prisoners. One of the rooms of the prison was used
as a torture chamber. "I was almost affrighted," says Ellwood, "by the
dismalness of the place; for, besides that the walls were all laid over
with black, from top to bottom, there stood in the middle a great
whipping-post.
"The manner of whipping there is, to strip the party to the skin, from
the waist upward, and, having fastened him to the whipping-post, (so that
he can neither resist nor shun the strokes,) to lash his naked body with
long, slender twigs of holly, which will bend almost like thongs around
the body; and these, having little knots upon them, tear the skin and
flesh, and give extreme pain."
To this terrible punishment aged men and delicately nurtured young
females were often subjected, during this season of hot persecution.
From the Bridewell, Ellwood was at length removed to Newgate, and thrust
in, with other "Friends," amidst the common felons. He speaks of this
prison, with its thieves, murderers, and prostitutes, its over-crowded
apartments and loathsome cells, as "a hell upon earth." In a closet,
adjoining the room where he was lodged, lay for several days the
quartered bodies of Phillips, Tongue, and Gibbs, the leaders of the Fifth
Monarchy rising, frightful and loathsome, as they came from the bloody
hands of the executioners! These ghastly remains were at length obtained
by the friends of the dead, and buried. The heads were ordered to be
prepared for setting up in different parts of the city. Read this grim
passage of description:--
"I saw the heads when they were brought to be boiled. The hangman
fetched them in a dirty basket, out of some by-place, and, setting them
down among the felons, he and they made sport of them. They took them by
the hair, flouting, jeering, and laughing at them; and then giving them
some ill names, boxed them on their ears and cheeks; which done, the
hangman put them into his kettle, and parboiled them with bay-salt and
cummin-seed: that to keep them from putrefaction, and this to keep off
the fowls from seizing upon them. The whole sight, as well that of the
bloody quarters first as this of the heads afterwards, was both frightful
and loathsome, and begat an abhorrence in my nature."
At the next session of the municipal court at the Old Bailey, Ellwood
obtained his discharge. After paying a visit to "my Master Milton," he
made his way to Chalfont, the home of his friends the Penningtons, where
he was soon after engaged as a Latin teacher. Here he seems to have had
his trials and temptations. Gulielma Springette, the daughter of
Pennington's wife, his old playmate, had now grown to be "a fair woman of
marriageable age," and, as he informs us, "very desirable, whether regard
was had to her outward person, which wanted nothing to make her
completely comely, or to the endowments of her mind, which were every way
extraordinary, or to her outward fortune, which was fair." From all
which, we are not surprised to learn that "she was secretly and openly
sought for by many of almost every rank and condition." "To whom,"
continues Thomas, "in their respective turns, (till he at length came for
whom she was reserved,) she carried herself with so much evenness of
temper, such courteous freedom, guarded by the strictest modesty, that as
it gave encouragement or ground of hope to none, so neither did it
administer any matter of offence or just cause of complaint to any."
Beautiful and noble maiden! How the imagination fills up this outline
limning by her friend, and, if truth must be told, admirer! Serene,
courteous, healthful; a ray of tenderest and blandest light, shining
steadily in the sober gloom of that old household! Confirmed Quaker as
she is, shrinking from none of the responsibilities and dangers of her
profession, and therefore liable at any time to the penalties of prison
and whipping-post, under that plain garb and in spite of that "certain
gravity of look and behavior,"--which, as we have seen, on one occasion
awed young Ellwood into silence,--youth, beauty, and refinement assert
their prerogatives; love knows no creed; the gay, and titled, and wealthy
crowd around her, suing in vain for her favor.
"Followed, like the tided moon,
She moves as calmly on,"
"until he at length comes for whom she was reserved," and her name is
united with that of one worthy even of her, the world-renowned William
Penn.
Meantime, one cannot but feel a good degree of sympathy with young
Ellwood, her old schoolmate and playmate, placed, as he was, in the same
family with her, enjoying her familiar conversation and unreserved
confidence, and, as he says, the "advantageous opportunities of riding
and walking abroad with her, by night as well as by day, without any
other company than her maid; for so great, indeed, was the confidence
that her mother had in me, that she thought her daughter safe, if I was
with her, even from the plots and designs of others upon her." So near,
and yet, alas! in truth, so distant! The serene and gentle light which
shone upon him, in the sweet solitudes of Chalfont, was that of a star,
itself unapproachable.
As he himself meekly intimates, she was reserved for another. He seems
to have fully understood his own position in respect to her; although, to
use his own words, "others, measuring him by the propensity of their own
inclinations, concluded he would steal her, run away with her, and marry
her." Little did these jealous surmisers know of the true and really
heroic spirit of the young Latin master. His own apology and defence of
his conduct, under circumstances of temptation which St. Anthony himself
could have scarcely better resisted, will not be amiss.
"I was not ignorant of the various fears which filled the jealous heads
of some concerning me, neither was I so stupid nor so divested of all
humanity as not to be sensible of the real and innate worth and virtue
which adorned that excellent dame, and attracted the eyes and hearts of
so many, with the greatest importunity, to seek and solicit her; nor was
I so devoid of natural heat as not to feel some sparklings of desire, as
well as others; but the force of truth and sense of honor suppressed
whatever would have risen beyond the bounds of fair and virtuous
friendship. For I easily foresaw that, if I should have attempted any
thing in a dishonorable way, by fraud or force, upon her, I should have
thereby brought a wound upon mine own soul, a foul scandal upon my
religious profession, and an infamous stain upon mine honor, which was
far more dear unto me than my life. Wherefore, having observed how some
others had befooled themselves, by misconstruing her common kindness
(expressed in an innocent, open, free, and familiar conversation,
springing from the abundant affability, courtesy, and sweetness of her
natural temper) to be the effect of a singular regard and peculiar
affection to them, I resolved to shun the rock whereon they split; and,
remembering the saying of the poet
'Felix quem faciunt aliena Pericula cantum,'
I governed myself in a free yet respectful carriage towards her, thereby
preserving a fair reputation with my friends, and enjoying as much of her
favor and kindness, in a virtuous and firm friendship, as was fit for her
to show or for me to seek."
Well and worthily said, poor Thomas! Whatever might be said of others,
thou, at least, wast no coxcomb. Thy distant and involuntary admiration
of "the fair Guli" needs, however, no excuse. Poor human nature, guard
it as one may, with strictest discipline and painfully cramping
environment, will sometimes act out itself; and, in thy case, not even
George Fox himself, knowing thy beautiful young friend, (and doubtless
admiring her too, for he was one of the first to appreciate and honor the
worth and dignity or woman,) could have found it in his heart to censure
thee!
At this period, as was indeed most natural, our young teacher solaced
himself with occasional appeals to what he calls "the Muses." There is
reason to believe, however, that the Pagan sisterhood whom he ventured to
invoke seldom graced his study with their personal attendance. In these
rhyming efforts, scattered up and down his Journal, there are occasional
sparkles of genuine wit, and passages of keen sarcasm, tersely and fitly
expressed. Others breathe a warm, devotional feeling; in the following
brief prayer, for instance, the wants of the humble Christian are
condensed in a manner worthy of Quarles or Herbert:--
"Oh! that mine eye might closed be
To what concerns me not to see;
That deafness might possess mine ear
To what concerns me not to hear;
That Truth my tongue might always tie
From ever speaking foolishly;
That no vain thought might ever rest
Or be conceived in my breast;
That by each word and deed and thought
Glory may to my God be brought!
But what are wishes? Lord, mine eye
On Thee is fixed, to Thee I cry
Wash, Lord, and purify my heart,
And make it clean in every part;
And when 't is clean, Lord, keep it too,
For that is more than I can do."
The thought in the following extracts from a poem written on the death of
his friend Pennington's son is trite, but not inaptly or inelegantly
expressed:--
"What ground, alas, has any man
To set his heart on things below,
Which, when they seem most like to stand,
Fly like the arrow from the bow!
Who's now atop erelong shall feel
The circling motion of the wheel!
"The world cannot afford a thing
Which to a well-composed mind
Can any lasting pleasure bring,
But in itself its grave will find.
All things unto their centre tend
What had beginning must have end!
"No disappointment can befall
Us, having Him who's all in all!
What can of pleasure him prevent
Who lath the Fountain of Content?"
In the year 1663 a severe law was enacted against the "sect called
Quakers," prohibiting their meetings, with the penalty of banishment for
the third offence! The burden of the prosecution which followed fell
upon the Quakers of the metropolis, large numbers of whom were heavily
fined, imprisoned, and sentenced to be banished from their native land.
Yet, in time, our worthy friend Ellwood came in for his own share of
trouble, in consequence of attending the funeral of one of his friends.
An evil-disposed justice of the county obtained information of the Quaker
gathering; and, while the body of the dead was "borne on Friends'
shoulders through the street, in order to be carried to the burying-
ground, which was at the town's end," says Ellwood, "he rushed out upon
us with the constables and a rabble of rude fellows whom he had gathered
together, and, having his drawn sword in his hand, struck one of the
foremost of the bearers with it, commanding them to set down the coffin.
But the Friend who was so stricken, being more concerned for the safety
of the dead body than for his own, lest it should fall, and any indecency
thereupon follow, held the coffin fast; which the justice observing, and
being enraged that his word was not forthwith obeyed, set his hand to the
coffin, and with a forcible thrust threw it off from the bearers'
shoulders, so, that it fell to the ground in the middle of the street,
and there we were forced to leave it; for the constables and rabble fell
upon us, and drew some and drove others into the inn. Of those thus
taken," continues Ellwood, "I was one. They picked out ten of us, and
sent us to Aylesbury jail.
"They caused the body to lie in the open street and cartway, so that all
travellers that passed, whether horsemen, coaches, carts, or wagons, were
fain to break out of the way to go by it, until it was almost night. And
then, having caused a grave to be made in the unconsecrated part of what
is called the Churchyard, they forcibly took the body from the widow, and
buried it there."
He remained a prisoner only about two months, during which period he
comforted himself by such verse-making as follows, reminding us of
similar enigmas in Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_:
"Lo! a Riddle for the wise,
In the which a Mystery lies.
RIDDLE.
"Some men are free whilst they in prison lie;
Others who ne'er saw prison captives die.
CAUTION.
"He that can receive it may,
He that cannot, let him stay,
Not be hasty, but suspend
Judgment till he sees the end.
SOLUTION.
"He's only free, indeed, who's free from sin,
And he is fastest bound that's bound therein."
In the mean time, where is our "Master Milton"? We, left him deprived of
his young companion and reader, sitting lonely in his small dining-room,
in Jewen Street. It is now the year 1665; is not the pestilence in
London? A sinful and godless city, with its bloated bishops fawning
around the Nell Gwyns of a licentious and profane Defender of the Faith;
its swaggering and drunken cavaliers; its ribald jesters; its obscene
ballad-singers; its loathsome prisons, crowded with Godfearing men and
women: is not the measure of its iniquity already filled up? Three years
only have passed since the terrible prayer of Vane went upward from the
scaffold on Tower Hill: "When my blood is shed upon the block, let it, O
God, have a voice afterward!" Audible to thy ear, O bosom friend of the
martyr! has that blood cried from earth; and now, how fearfully is it
answered! Like the ashes which the Seer of the Hebrews cast towards
Heaven, it has returned in boils and blains upon the proud and oppressive
city. John Milton, sitting blind in Jewen Street, has heard the toll of
the death-bells, and the nightlong rumble of the burial-carts, and the
terrible summons, "Bring out your dead!" The Angel of the Plague, in
yellow mantle, purple-spotted, walks the streets. Why should he tarry in
a doomed city, forsaken of God! Is not the command, even to him, "Arise
and flee, for thy life"? In some green nook of the quiet country, he may
finish the great work which his hands have found to do. He bethinks him
of his old friends, the Penningtons, and his young Quaker companion, the
patient and gentle Ellwood. "Wherefore," says the latter, "some little
time before I went to Aylesbury jail, I was desired by my quondam Master
Milton to take an house for him in the neighborhood where I dwelt, that
he might go out of the city for the safety of himself and his family, the
pestilence then growing hot in London. I took a pretty box for him in
Giles Chalfont, a mile from me, of which I gave him notice, and intended
to have waited on him and seen him well settled, but was prevented by
that imprisonment. But now being released and returned home, I soon made
a visit to him, to welcome him into the country. After some common
discourse had passed between us, he called for a manuscript of his,
which, having brought, he delivered to me, bidding me take it home with
me and read it at my leisure, and when I had so done return it to him,
with my judgment thereupon."
Now, what does the reader think young Ellwood carried in his gray coat
pocket across the dikes and hedges and through the green lanes of Giles
Chalfont that autumn day? Let us look farther "When I came home, and had
set myself to read it, I found it was that excellent poem which he
entitled _Paradise Lost_. After I had, with the best attention, read it
through, I made him another visit; and, returning his book with due
acknowledgment of the favor he had done me in communicating it to me, he
asked me how I liked it and what I thought of it, which I modestly but
freely told him; and, after some farther discourse about it, I pleasantly
said to him, 'Thou hast said much here of Paradise Lost; what hast thou
to say of Paradise Found?' He made me no answer, but sat some time in a
muse; then brake off that discourse, and fell upon another subject."
"I modestly but freely told him what I thought" of Paradise Lost! What
he told him remains a mystery. One would like to know more precisely
what the first critical reader of that song "of Man's first disobedience"
thought of it. Fancy the young Quaker and blind Milton sitting, some
pleasant afternoon of the autumn of that old year, in "the pretty box" at
Chalfont, the soft wind through the open window lifting the thin hair of
the glorious old Poet! Back-slidden England, plague-smitten, and
accursed with her faithless Church and libertine King, knows little of
poor "Master Milton," and takes small note of his Puritanic verse-making.
Alone, with his humble friend, he sits there, conning over that poem
which, he fondly hoped, the world, which had grown all dark and strange
to the author, "would not willingly let die." The suggestion in respect
to Paradise Found, to which, as we have seen, "he made no answer, but sat
some time in a muse," seems not to have been lost; for, "after the
sickness was over," continues Ellwood, "and the city well cleansed, and
become safely habitable again, he returned thither; and when afterwards I
waited on him there, which I seldom failed of doing whenever my occasions
drew me to London, he showed me his second poem, called Paradise Gained;
and, in a pleasant tone, said to me, 'This is owing to you, for you put
it into my head by the question you put to me at Chalfont, which before I
had not thought of.'"
Golden days were these for the young Latin reader, even if it be true, as
we suspect, that he was himself very far from appreciating the glorious
privilege which he enjoyed, of the familiar friendship and confidence of
Milton. But they could not last. His amiable host, Isaac Pennington,
a blameless and quiet country gentleman, was dragged from his house by a
military force, and lodged in Aylesbury jail; his wife and family
forcibly ejected from their pleasant home, which was seized upon by the
government as security for the fines imposed upon its owner. The plague
was in the village of Aylesbury, and in the very prison itself; but the
noble-hearted Mary Pennington followed her husband, sharing with him the
dark peril. Poor Ellwood, while attending a monthly meeting at Hedgerly,
with six others, (among them one Morgan Watkins, a poor old Welshman,
who, painfully endeavoring to utter his testimony in his own dialect, was
suspected by the Dogberry of a justice of being a Jesuit trolling over
his Latin,) was arrested, and committed to Wiccomb House of Correction.
This was a time of severe trial for the sect with which Ellwood had
connected himself. In the very midst of the pestilence, when thousands
perished weekly in London, fifty-four Quakers were marched through the
almost deserted streets, and placed on board a ship, for the purpose of
being conveyed, according to their sentence of banishment, to the West
Indies. The ship lay for a long time, with many others similarly
situated, a helpless prey to the pestilence. Through that terrible
autumn, the prisoners sat waiting for the summons of the ghastly
Destroyer; and, from their floating dungeon.
"Heard the groan
Of agonizing ships from shore to shore;
Heard nightly plunged beneath the sullen wave
The frequent corse."
When the vessel at length set sail, of the fifty-four who went on board,
twenty-seven only were living. A Dutch privateer captured her, when two
days out, and carried the prisoners to North Holland, where they were set
at liberty. The condition of the jails in the city, where were large
numbers of Quakers, was dreadful in the extreme. Ill ventilated,
crowded, and loathsome with the accumulated filth of centuries, they
invited the disease which daily decimated their cells. "Go on!" says
Pennington, writing to the King and bishops from his plague-infected cell
in the Aylesbury prison: "try it out with the Spirit of the Lord! Come
forth with your laws, and prisons, and spoiling of goods, and banishment,
and death, if the Lord please, and see if ye can carry it! Whom the Lord
loveth He can save at His pleasure. Hath He begun to break our bonds and
deliver us, and shall we now distrust Him? Are we in a worse condition
than Israel was when the sea was before them, the mountains on either
side, and the Egyptians behind, pursuing them?"
Brave men and faithful! It is not necessary that the present generation,
how quietly reaping the fruit of your heroic endurance, should see eye to
eye with you in respect to all your testimonies and beliefs, in order to
recognize your claim to gratitude and admiration. For, in an age of
hypocritical hollowness and mean self-seeking, when, with noble
exceptions, the very Puritans of Cromwell's Reign of the Saints were
taking profane lessons from their old enemies, and putting on an outside
show of conformity, for the sake of place or pardon, ye maintained the
austere dignity of virtue, and, with King and Church and Parliament
arrayed against you, vindicated the Rights of Conscience, at the cost of
home, fortune, and life. English liberty owes more to your unyielding
firmness than to the blows stricken for her at Worcester and Naseby.
In 1667, we find the Latin teacher in attendance at a great meeting of
Friends, in London, convened at the suggestion of George Fox, for the
purpose of settling a little difficulty which had arisen among the
Friends, even under the pressure of the severest persecution, relative to
the very important matter of "wearing the hat." George Fox, in his love
of truth and sincerity in word and action, had discountenanced the
fashionable doffing of the hat, and other flattering obeisances towards
men holding stations in Church or State, as savoring of man-worship,
giving to the creature the reverence only due to the Creator, as
undignified and wanting in due self-respect, and tending to support
unnatural and oppressive distinctions among those equal in the sight of
God. But some of his disciples evidently made much more of this "hat
testimony" than their teacher. One John Perrott, who had just returned
from an unsuccessful attempt to convert the Pope, at Rome, (where that
dignitary, after listening to his exhortations, and finding him in no
condition to be benefited by the spiritual physicians of the Inquisition,
had quietly turned him over to the temporal ones of the Insane Hospital,)
had broached the doctrine that, in public or private worship, the hat was
not to be taken off, without an immediate revelation or call to do so!
Ellwood himself seems to have been on the point of yielding to this
notion, which appears to have been the occasion of a good deal of
dissension and scandal. Under these circumstances, to save truth from
reproach, and an important testimony to the essential equality of mankind
from running into sheer fanaticism, Fox summoned his tried and faithful
friends together, from all parts of the United Kingdom, and, as it
appears, with the happiest result. Hat-revelations were discountenanced,
good order and harmony reestablished, and John Perrott's beaver and the
crazy head under it were from thenceforth powerless for evil. Let those
who are disposed to laugh at this notable "Ecumenical Council of the Hat"
consider that ecclesiastical history has brought down to us the records
of many larger and more imposing convocations, wherein grave bishops and
learned fathers took each other by the beard upon matters of far less
practical importance.
In 1669, we find Ellwood engaged in escorting his fair friend, Gulielma,
to her uncle's residence in Sussex. Passing through London, and taking
the Tunbridge road, they stopped at Seven Oak to dine. The Duke of York
was on the road, with his guards and hangers-on, and the inn was filled
with a rude company. "Hastening," says Ellwood, "from a place where we
found nothing but rudeness, the roysterers who swarmed there, besides the
damning oaths they belched out against each other, looked very sourly
upon us, as if they grudged us the horses which we rode and the clothes
we wore." They had proceeded but a little distance, when they were
overtaken by some half dozen drunken rough-riding cavaliers, of the
Wildrake stamp, in full pursuit after the beautiful Quakeress. One of
them impudently attempted to pull her upon his horse before him, but was
held at bay by Ellwood, who seems, on this occasion, to have relied
somewhat upon his "stick," in defending his fair charge. Calling up
Gulielma's servant, he bade him ride on one side of his mistress, while
he guarded her on the other. "But he," says Ellwood, "not thinking it
perhaps decent to ride so near his mistress, left room enough for another
to ride between." In dashed the drunken retainer, and Gulielma was once
more in peril. It was clearly no time for exhortations and
expostulations; "so," says Ellwood, "I chopped in upon him, by a nimble
turn, and kept him at bay. I told him I had hitherto spared him, but
wished him not to provoke me further. This I spoke in such a tone as
bespoke an high resentment of the abuse put upon us, and withal pressed
him so hard with my horse that I suffered him not to come up again to
Guli." By this time, it became evident to the companions of the
ruffianly assailant that the young Quaker was in earnest, and they
hastened to interfere. "For they," says Ellwood, "seeing the contest
rise so high, and probably fearing it would rise higher, not knowing
where it might stop, came in to part us; which they did by taking him
away."
Escaping from these sons of Belial, Ellwood and his fair companion rode
on through Tunbridge Wells, "the street thronged with men, who looked
very earnestly at them, but offered them no affront," and arrived, late
at night, in a driving rain, at the mansion-house of Herbert Springette.
The fiery old gentleman was so indignant at the insult offered to his
niece, that he was with difficulty dissuaded from demanding satisfaction
at the hands of the Duke of York.
This seems to have been his last ride with Gulielma. She was soon after
married to William Penn, and took up her abode at Worminghurst, in
Sussex. How blessed and beautiful was that union may be understood from
the following paragraph of a letter, written by her husband, on the eve
of his departure for America to lay the foundations of a Christian
colony:--
"My dear wife! remember thou wast the love of my youth, and much the
joy of my life, the most beloved as well as the most worthy of all
my earthly comforts; and the reason of that love was more thy inward
than thy outward excellences, which yet were many. God knows, and
thou knowest it, I can say it was a match of Providence's making;
and God's image in us both was the first thing and the most amiable
and engaging ornament in our eyes."
About this time our friend Thomas, seeing that his old playmate at
Chalfont was destined for another, turned his attention towards a "young
Friend, named Mary Ellis." He had been for several years acquainted with
her, but now he "found his heart secretly drawn and inclining towards
her." "At length," he tells us, "as I was sitting all alone, waiting
upon the Lord for counsel and guidance in this, in itself and to me,
important affair, I felt a word sweetly arise in me, as if I had heard a
Voice which said, Go, and prevail! and faith springing in my heart at the
word, I immediately rose and went, nothing doubting." On arriving at her
residence, he states that he "solemnly opened his mind to her, which was
a great surprisal to her, for she had taken in an apprehension, as others
had also done," that his eye had been fixed elsewhere and nearer home.
"I used not many words to her," he continues, "but I felt a Divine Power
went along with the words, and fixed the matter expressed by them so fast
in her breast, that, as she afterwards acknowledged to me, she could not
shut it out."
"I continued," he says, "my visits to my best-beloved Friend until we
married, which was on the 28th day of the eighth month, 1669. We took
each other in a select meeting of the ancient and grave Friends of that
country. A very solemn meeting it was, and in a weighty frame of spirit
we were." His wife seems to have had some estate; and Ellwood, with that
nice sense of justice which marked all his actions, immediately made his
will, securing to her, in case of his decease, all her own goods and
moneys, as well as all that he had himself acquired before marriage.
"Which," he tells, "was indeed but little, yet, by all that little, more
than I had ever given her ground to expect with me." His father, who was
yet unreconciled to the son's religious views, found fault with his
marriage, on the ground that it was unlawful and unsanctioned by priest
or liturgy, and consequently refused to render him any pecuniary
assistance. Yet, in spite of this and other trials, he seems to have
preserved his serenity of spirit. After an unpleasant interview with his
father, on one occasion, he wrote, at his lodgings in an inn, in London,
what he calls _A Song of Praise_. An extract from it will serve to show
the spirit of the good man in affliction:--
"Unto the Glory of Thy Holy Name,
Eternal God! whom I both love and fear,
I hereby do declare, I never came
Before Thy throne, and found Thee loath to hear,
But always ready with an open ear;
And, though sometimes Thou seem'st Thy face to hide,
As one that had withdrawn his love from me,
'T is that my faith may to the full, be tried,
And that I thereby may the better see
How weak I am when not upheld by Thee!"
The next year, 1670, an act of Parliament, in relation to "Conventicles,"
provided that any person who should be present at any meeting, under
color or pretence of any exercise of religion, in other manner than
according to the liturgy and practice of the Church of England, "should
be liable to fines of from five to ten shillings; and any person
preaching at or giving his house for the meeting, to a fine of twenty
pounds: one third of the fines being received by the informer or
informers." As a natural consequence of such a law, the vilest
scoundrels in the land set up the trade of informers and heresy-hunters.
Wherever a dissenting meeting or burial took place, there was sure to be
a mercenary spy, ready to bring a complaint against all in attendance.
The Independents and Baptists ceased, in a great measure, to hold public
meetings, yet even they did not escape prosecution. Bunyan, for
instance, in these days, was dreaming, like another Jacob, of angels
ascending and descending, in Bedford prison. But upon the poor Quakers
fell, as usual, the great force of the unjust enactment. Some of these
spies or informers, men of sharp wit, close countenances, pliant tempers,
and skill in dissimulation, took the guise of Quakers, Independents, or
Baptists, as occasion required, thrusting themselves into the meetings of
the proscribed sects, ascertaining the number who attended, their rank
and condition, and then informing against them. Ellwood, in his Journal
for 1670, describes several of these emissaries of evil. One of them
came to a Friend's house, in Bucks, professing to be a brother in the
faith, but, overdoing his counterfeit Quakerism, was detected and
dismissed by his host. Betaking himself to the inn, he appeared in his
true character, drank and swore roundly, and confessed over his cups that
he had been sent forth on his mission by the Rev. Dr. Mew, Vice-
Chancellor of Oxford. Finding little success in counterfeiting
Quakerism, he turned to the Baptists, where, for a time, he met with
better success. Ellwood, at this time, rendered good service to his
friends, by exposing the true character of these wretches, and bringing
them to justice for theft, perjury, and other misdemeanors.
While this storm of persecution lasted, (a period of two or three years,)
the different dissenting sects felt, in some measure, a common sympathy,
and, while guarding themselves against their common foe, had little
leisure for controversy with each other; but, as was natural, the
abatement of their mutual suffering and danger was the signal for
renewing their suspended quarrels. The Baptists fell upon the Quakers,
with pamphlet and sermon; the latter replied in the same way. One of the
most conspicuous of the Baptist disputants was the famous Jeremy Ives,
with whom our friend Ellwood seems to have had a good deal of trouble.
"His name," says Ellwood, "was up for a topping Disputant. He was well,
read in the fallacies of logic, and was ready in framing syllogisms. His
chief art lay in tickling the humor of rude, unlearned, and injudicious
hearers."
The following piece of Ellwood's, entitled "An Epitaph for Jeremy Ives,"
will serve to show that wit and drollery were sometimes found even among
the proverbially sober Quakers of the seventeenth century:--
"Beneath this stone, depressed, doth lie
The Mirror of Hypocrisy--
Ives, whose mercenary tongue
Like a Weathercock was hung,
And did this or that way play,
As Advantage led the way.
If well hired, he would dispute,
Otherwise he would be mute.
But he'd bawl for half a day,
If he knew and liked his pay.
"For his person, let it pass;
Only note his face was brass.
His heart was like a pumice-stone,
And for Conscience he had none.
Of Earth and Air he was composed,
With Water round about enclosed.
Earth in him had greatest share,
Questionless, his life lay there;
Thence his cankered Envy sprung,
Poisoning both his heart and tongue.
"Air made him frothy, light, and vain,
And puffed him with a proud disdain.
Into the Water oft he went,
And through the Water many sent
That was, ye know, his element!
The greatest odds that did appear
Was this, for aught that I can hear,
That he in cold did others dip,
But did himself hot water sip.
"And his cause he'd never doubt,
If well soak'd o'er night in Stout;
But, meanwhile, he must not lack
Brandy and a draught of Sack.
One dispute would shrink a bottle
Of three pints, if not a pottle.
One would think he fetched from thence
All his dreamy eloquence.
"Let us now bring back the Sot
To his Aqua Vita pot,
And observe, with some content,
How he framed his argument.
That his whistle he might wet,
The bottle to his mouth he set,
And, being Master of that Art,
Thence he drew the Major part,
But left the Minor still behind;
Good reason why, he wanted wind;
If his breath would have held out,
He had Conclusion drawn, no doubt."
The residue of Ellwood's life seems to have glided on in serenity and
peace. He wrote, at intervals, many pamphlets in defence of his Society,
and in favor of Liberty of Conscience. At his hospitable residence, the
leading spirits of the sect were warmly welcomed. George Fox and William
Penn seem to have been frequent guests. We find that, in 1683, he was
arrested for seditious publications, when on the eve of hastening to his
early friend, Gulielma, who, in the absence of her husband, Governor
Penn, had fallen dangerously ill. On coming before the judge, "I told
him," says Ellwood, "that I had that morning received an express out of
Sussex, that William Penn's wife (with whom I had an intimate
acquaintance and strict friendship, _ab ipsis fere incunabilis_, at
least, _a teneris unguiculis_) lay now ill, not without great danger, and
that she had expressed her desire that I would come to her as soon as I
could." The judge said "he was very sorry for Madam Penn's illness," of
whose virtues he spoke very highly, but not more than was her due. Then
he told me, "that, for her sake, he would do what he could to further my
visit to her." Escaping from the hands of the law, he visited his
friend, who was by this time in a way of recovery, and, on his return,
learned that the prosecution had been abandoned.
At about this date his narrative ceases. We learn, from other sources,
that he continued to write and print in defence of his religious views up
to the year of his death, which took place in 1713. One of his
productions, a poetical version of the Life of David, may be still met
with, in the old Quaker libraries. On the score of poetical merit, it is
about on a level with Michael Drayton's verses on the same subject. As
the history of one of the firm confessors of the old struggle for
religious freedom, of a genial-hearted and pleasant scholar, the friend
of Penn and Milton, and the suggester of Paradise Regained, we trust our
hurried sketch has not been altogether without interest; and that,
whatever may be the religious views of our readers, they have not failed
to recognize a good and true man in Thomas Ellwood.
JAMES NAYLER.
"You will here read the true story of that much injured, ridiculed
man, James Nayler; what dreadful sufferings, with what patience he
endured, even to the boring of the tongue with hot irons, without a
murmur; and with what strength of mind, when the delusion he had
fallen into, which they stigmatized as blasphemy, had given place to
clearer thoughts, he could renounce his error in a strain of the
beautifullest humility."--Essays of Elia.
"Would that Carlyle could now try his hand at the English Revolution!"
was our exclamation, on laying down the last volume of his remarkable
History of the French Revolution with its brilliant and startling word-
pictures still flashing before us. To some extent this wish has been
realized in the Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell. Yet we confess
that the perusal of these volumes has disappointed us. Instead of giving
himself free scope, as in his French Revolution, and transferring to his
canvas all the wild and ludicrous, the terrible and beautiful phases of
that moral phenomenon, he has here concentrated all his artistic skill
upon a single figure, whom he seems to have regarded as the embodiment
and hero of the great event. All else on his canvas is subordinated to
the grim image of the colossal Puritan. Intent upon presenting him as
the fitting object of that "hero-worship," which, in its blind admiration
and adoration of mere abstract Power, seems to us at times nothing less
than devil-worship, he dwarfs, casts into the shadow, nay, in some
instances caricatures and distorts, the figures which surround him. To
excuse Cromwell in his usurpation, Henry Vane, one of those exalted and
noble characters, upon whose features the lights held by historical
friends or foes detect no blemish, is dismissed with a sneer and an
utterly unfounded imputation of dishonesty. To reconcile, in some
degree, the discrepancy between the declarations of Cromwell, in behalf
of freedom of conscience, and that mean and cruel persecution which the
Quakers suffered under the Protectorate, the generally harmless
fanaticism of a few individuals bearing that name is gravely urged. Nay,
the fact that some weak-brained enthusiasts undertook to bring about the
millennium, by associating together, cultivating the earth, and "dibbling
beans" for the New Jerusalem market, is regarded by our author as the
"germ of Quakerism;" and furnishes an occasion for sneering at "my poor
friend Dryasdust, lamentably tearing his hair over the intolerance of
that old time to Quakerism and such like."
The readers of this (with all its faults) powerfully written Biography
cannot fail to have been impressed with the intensely graphic description
(Part I., vol. ii., pp. 184, 185) of the entry of the poor fanatic,
James Nayler, and his forlorn and draggled companions into Bristol.
Sadly ludicrous is it; affecting us like the actual sight of tragic
insanity enacting its involuntary comedy, and making us smile through our
tears.
In another portion of the work, a brief account is given of the trial and
sentence of Nayler, also in the serio-comic view; and the poor man is
dismissed with the simple intimation, that after his punishment he
"repented, and confessed himself mad." It was no part of the author's
business, we are well aware, to waste time and words upon the history of
such a man as Nayler; he was of no importance to him, otherwise than as
one of the disturbing influences in the government of the Lord Protector.
But in our mind the story of James Nayler has always been one of
interest; and in the belief that it will prove so to others, who, like
Charles Lamb, can appreciate the beautiful humility of a forgiven spirit,
we have taken some pains to collect and embody the facts of it.
James Nayler was born in the parish of Ardesley, in Yorkshire, 1616. His
father was a substantial farmer, of good repute and competent estate and
be, in consequence, received a good education: At the age of twenty-two,
he married and removed to Wakefield parish, which has since been made
classic ground by the pen of Goldsmith. Here, an honest, God-fearing
farmer, he tilled his soil, and alternated between cattle-markets and
Independent conventicles. In 1641, he obeyed the summons of "my Lord
Fairfax" and the Parliament, and joined a troop of horse composed of
sturdy Independents, doing such signal service against "the man of
Belial, Charles Stuart," that he was promoted to the rank of
quartermaster, in which capacity he served under General Lambert, in his
Scottish campaign. Disabled at length by sickness, he was honorably
dismissed from the service, and returned to his family in 1649.
For three or four years, he continued to attend the meetings of the
Independents, as a zealous and devout member. But it so fell out, that
in the winter of 1651, George Fox, who had just been released from a
cruel imprisonment in Derby jail, felt a call to set his face towards
Yorkshire. "So travelling," says Fox, in his Journal, "through the
countries, to several places, preaching Repentance and the Word of Life,
I came into the parts about Wakefield, where James Navler lived." The
worn and weary soldier, covered with the scars of outward battle,
received, as he believed, in the cause of God and his people, against
Antichrist and oppression, welcomed with thankfulness the veteran of
another warfare; who, in conflict with a principalities and powers, and
spiritual wickedness in high places, had made his name a familiar one in
every English hamlet. "He and Thomas Goodyear," says Fox, "came to me,
and were both convinced, and received the truth." He soon after joined
the Society of Friends. In the spring of the next year he was in his
field following his plough, and meditating, as he was wont, on the great
questions of life and duty, when he seemed to hear a voice bidding him go
out from his kindred and his father's house, with an assurance that the
Lord would be with him, while laboring in his service. Deeply impressed,
he left his employment, and, returning to his house, made immediate
preparations for a journey. But hesitation and doubt followed; he became
sick from anxiety of mind, and his recovery, for a time, was exceedingly
doubtful. On his restoration to bodily health, he obeyed what he
regarded as a clear intimation of duty, and went forth a preacher of the
doctrines he had embraced. The Independent minister of the society to
which he had formerly belonged sent after him the story that he was the
victim of sorcery; that George Fox carried with him a bottle, out of
which he made people drink; and that the draught had the power to change
a Presbyterian or Independent into a Quaker at once; that, in short, the
Arch-Quaker, Fox, was a wizard, and could be seen at the same moment of
time riding on the same black horse, in two places widely separated. He
had scarcely commenced his exhortations, before the mob, excited by such
stories, assailed him. In the early summer of the year we hear of him in
Appleby jail. On his release, he fell in company with George Fox. At
Walney Island, he was furiously assaulted, and beaten with clubs and
stones; the poor priest-led fishermen being fully persuaded that they
were dealing with a wizard. The spirit of the man, under these
circumstances, may be seen in the following extract from a letter to his
friends, dated at "Killet, in Lancashire, the 30th of 8th Month, 1652:"--
"Dear friends! Dwell in patience, and wait upon the Lord, who will do
his own work. Look not at man who is in the work, nor at any man
opposing it; but rest in the will of the Lord, that so ye may be
furnished with patience, both to do and to suffer what ye shall be called
unto, that your end in all things may be His praise. Meet often
together; take heed of what exalteth itself above its brother; but keep
low, and serve one another in love."
Laboring thus, interrupted only by persecution, stripes, and
imprisonment, he finally came to London, and spoke with great power and
eloquence in the meetings of Friends in that city. Here he for the first
time found himself surrounded by admiring and sympathizing friends. He
saw and rejoiced in the fruits of his ministry. Profane and drunken
cavaliers, intolerant Presbyters, and blind Papists, owned the truths
which he uttered, and counted themselves his disciples. Women, too, in
their deep trustfulness and admiring reverence, sat at the feet of the
eloquent stranger. Devout believers in the doctrine of the inward light
and manifestation of God in the heart of man, these latter, at length,
thought they saw such unmistakable evidences of the true life in James
Nayler, that they felt constrained to declare that Christ was, in an
especial manner, within him, and to call upon all to recognize in
reverent adoration this new incarnation of the divine and heavenly. The
wild enthusiasm of his disciples had its effect on the teacher. Weak in
body, worn with sickness, fasting, stripes, and prison-penance, and
naturally credulous and imaginative, is it strange that in some measure
he yielded to this miserable delusion? Let those who would harshly judge
him, or ascribe his fall to the peculiar doctrines of his sect, think of
Luther, engaged in personal combat with the Devil, or conversing with him
on points of theology in his bed-chamber; or of Bunyan at actual
fisticuffs with the adversary; or of Fleetwood and Vane and Harrison
millennium-mad, and making preparations for an earthly reign of King
Jesus. It was an age of intense religious excitement. Fanaticism had
become epidemic. Cromwell swayed his Parliaments by "revelations" and
Scripture phrases in the painted chamber; stout generals and sea-captains
exterminated the Irish, and swept Dutch navies from the ocean, with old
Jewish war-cries, and hymns of Deborah and Miriam; country justices
charged juries in Hebraisms, and cited the laws of Palestine oftener than
those of England. Poor Nayler found himself in the very midst of this
seething and confused moral maelstrom. He struggled against it for a
time, but human nature was weak; he became, to use his own words,
"bewildered and darkened," and the floods went over him.
Leaving London with some of his more zealous followers, not without
solemn admonition and rebuke from Francis Howgill and Edward Burrough,
who at that period were regarded as the most eminent and gifted of the
Society's ministers, he bent his steps towards Exeter. Here, in
consequence of the extravagance of his language and that of his
disciples, he was arrested and thrown into prison. Several infatuated
women surrounded the jail, declaring that "Christ was in prison," and on
being admitted to see him, knelt down and kissed his feet, exclaiming,
"Thy name shall be no more called James Nayler, but Jesus!" Let us pity
him and them. They, full of grateful and extravagant affection for the
man whose voice had called them away from worldly vanities to what they
regarded as eternal realities, whose hand they imagined had for them
swung back the pearl gates of the celestial city, and flooded their
atmosphere with light from heaven; he, receiving their homage (not as
offered to a poor, weak, sinful Yorkshire trooper, but rather to the
hidden man of the heart, the "Christ within" him) with that self-
deceiving humility which is but another name for spiritual pride.
Mournful, yet natural; such as is still in greater or less degree
manifested between the Catholic enthusiast and her confessor; such as the
careful observer may at times take note of in our Protestant revivals and
camp meetings.
How Nayler was released from Exeter jail does not appear, but the next we
hear of him is at Bristol, in the fall of the year. His entrance into
that city shows the progress which he and his followers had made in the
interval. Let us look at Carlyle's description of it: "A procession of
eight persons one, a man on horseback riding single, the others, men and
women partly riding double, partly on foot, in the muddiest highway in
the wettest weather; singing, all but the single rider, at whose bridle
walk and splash two women, 'Hosannah! Holy, holy! Lord God of Sabaoth,'
and other things, 'in a buzzing tone,' which the impartial hearer could
not make out. The single rider is a raw-boned male figure, 'with lank
hair reaching below his cheeks,' hat drawn close over his brows, 'nose
rising slightly in the middle,' of abstruse 'down look,' and large
dangerous jaws strictly closed: he sings not, sits there covered, and is
sung to by the others bare. Amid pouring deluges and mud knee-deep, 'so
that the rain ran in at their necks and vented it at their hose and
breeches: 'a spectacle to the West of England and posterity! Singing as
above; answering no question except in song. From Bedminster to
Ratcliffgate, along the streets to the High Cross of Bristol: at the High
Cross they are laid hold of by the authorities: turn out to be James
Nayler and Company."
Truly, a more pitiful example of "hero-worship" is not well to be
conceived of. Instead of taking the rational view of it, however, and
mercifully shutting up the actors in a mad-house, the authorities of that
day, conceiving it to be a stupendous blasphemy, and themselves God's
avengers in the matter, sent Nayler under strong guard up to London, to
be examined before the Parliament. After long and tedious examinations
and cross-questionings, and still more tedious debates, some portion of
which, not uninstructive to the reader, may still be found in Burton's
Diary, the following horrible resolution was agreed upon:--
"That James Nayler be set in the pillory, with his head in the pillory in
the Palace Yard, Westminster, during the space of two hours on Thursday
next; and be whipped by the hangman through the streets from Westminster
to the Old Exchange, and there, likewise, be set in the pillory, with his
head in the pillory for the space of two hours, between eleven and one,
on Saturday next, in each place wearing a paper containing a description
of his crimes; and that at the Old Exchange his tongue be bored through
with a hot iron, and that he be there stigmatized on the forehead with
the letter 'B;' and that he be afterwards sent to Bristol, to be conveyed
into and through the said city on horseback with his face backward, and
there, also, publicly whipped the next market-day after he comes thither;
that from thence he be committed to prison in Bridewell, London, and
there restrained from the society of people, and there to labor hard
until he shall be released by Parliament; and during that time be
debarred the use of pen, ink, and paper, and have no relief except what
he earns by his daily labor."
Such, neither more nor less, was, in the opinion of Parliament, required
on their part to appease the divine vengeance. The sentence was
pronounced on the 17th of the twelfth month; the entire time of the
Parliament for the two months previous having been occupied with the
case. The Presbyterians in that body were ready enough to make the most
of an offence committed by one who had been an Independent; the
Independents, to escape the stigma of extenuating the crimes of one of
their quondam brethren, vied with their antagonists in shrieking over the
atrocity of Nayler's blasphemy, and in urging its severe punishment.
Here and there among both classes were men disposed to leniency, and more
than one earnest plea was made for merciful dealing with a man whose
reason was evidently unsettled, and who was, therefore, a fitting object
of compassion; whose crime, if it could indeed be called one, was
evidently the result of a clouded intellect, and not of wilful intention
of evil. On the other hand, many were in favor of putting him to death
as a sort of peace-offering to the clergy, who, as a matter of course,
were greatly scandalized by Nayler's blasphemy, and still more by the
refusal of his sect to pay tithes, or recognize their divine commission.
Nayler was called into the Parliament-house to receive his sentence.
"I do not know mine offence," he said mildly. "You shall know it," said
Sir Thomas Widrington, "by your sentence." When the sentence was read,
he attempted to speak, but was silenced. "I pray God," said Nayler,
"that he may not lay this to your charge."
The next day, the 18th of the twelfth month, he stood in the pillory two
hours, in the chill winter air, and was then stripped and scourged by the
hangman at the tail of a cart through the streets. Three hundred and ten
stripes were inflicted; his back and arms were horribly cut and mangled,
and his feet crushed and bruised by the feet of horses treading on him in
the crowd. He bore all with uncomplaining patience; but was so far
exhausted by his sufferings, that it was found necessary to postpone the
execution of the residue of the sentence for one week. The terrible
severity of his sentence, and his meek endurance of it, had in the mean
time powerfully affected many of the humane and generous of all classes
in the city; and a petition for the remission of the remaining part of
the penalty was numerously signed and presented to Parliament. A debate
ensued upon it, but its prayer was rejected. Application was then made
to Cromwell, who addressed a letter to the Speaker of the House,
inquiring into the affair, protesting an "abhorrence and detestation of
giving or occasioning the least countenance to such opinions and
practices" as were imputed to Nayler; "yet we, being intrusted in the
present government on behalf of the people of these nations, and not
knowing how far such proceeding entered into wholly without us may extend
in the consequence of it, do hereby desire the House may let us know the
grounds and reasons whereon they have proceeded." From this, it is not
unlikely that the Protector might have been disposed to clemency, and to
look with a degree of charity upon the weakness and errors of one of his
old and tried soldiers who had striven like a brave man, as he was, for
the rights and liberties of Englishmen; but the clergy here interposed,
and vehemently, in the name of God and His Church, demanded that the
executioner should finish his work. Five of the most eminent of them,
names well known in the Protectorate, Caryl, Manton, Nye, Griffith, and
Reynolds, were deputed by Parliament to visit the mangled prisoner. A
reasonable request was made, that some impartial person might be present,
that justice might be done Nayler in the report of his answers. This was
refused. It was, however, agreed that the conversation should be written
down and a copy of it left with the jailer. He was asked if he was sorry
for his blasphemies. He said he did not know to what blasphemies they
alluded; that he did believe in Jesus Christ; that He had taken up His
dwelling in his own heart, and for the testimony of Him he now suffered.
"I believe," said one of the ministers, "in a Christ who was never in any
man's heart." "I know no such Christ," rejoined the prisoner; "the
Christ I witness to fills Heaven and Earth, and dwells in the hearts of
all true believers." On being asked why he allowed the women to adore
and worship him, he said he "denied bowing to the creature; but if they
beheld the power of Christ, wherever it was, and bowed to it, he could
not resist it, or say aught against it."
After some further parley, the reverend visitors grew angry, threw the
written record of the conversation in the fire, and left the prison, to
report the prisoner incorrigible.
On the 27th of the month, he was again led out of his cell and placed
upon the pillory. Thousands of citizens were gathered around, many of
them earnestly protesting against the extreme cruelty of his punishment.
Robert Rich, an influential and honorable merchant, followed him up to
the pillory with expressions of great sympathy, and held him by the hand
while the red-hot iron was pressed through his tongue and the brand was
placed on his forehead. He was next sent to Bristol, and publicly
whipped through the principal streets of that city; and again brought
back to the Bridewell prison, where he remained about two years, shut out
from all intercourse with his fellow-beings. At the expiration of this
period, he was released by order of Parliament. In the solitude of his
cell, the angel of patience had been with him.
Through the cloud which had so long rested over him, the clear light of
truth shone in upon his spirit; the weltering chaos of a disordered
intellect settled into the calm peace of a reconciliation with God and
man. His first act on leaving prison was to visit Bristol, the scene of
his melancholy fall. There he publicly confessed his errors, in the
eloquent earnestness of a contrite spirit, humbled in view of the past,
yet full of thanksgiving and praise for the great boon of forgiveness. A
writer who was present says, the "assembly was tendered, and broken into
tears; there were few dry eyes, and many were bowed in their minds."
In a paper which he published soon after, he acknowledges his lamentable
delusion. "Condemned forever," he says, "be all those false worships
with which any have idolized my person in that Night of my Temptation,
when the Power of Darkness was above rue; all that did in any way tend to
dishonor the Lord, or draw the minds of any from the measure of Christ
Jesus in themselves, to look at flesh, which is as grass, or to ascribe
that to the visible which belongs to Him. Darkness came over me
through want of watchfulness and obedience to the pure Eye of God. I was
taken captive from the true light; I was walking in the Night, as a
wandering bird fit for a prey. And if the Lord of all my mercies had not
rescued me, I had perished; for I was as one appointed to death and
destruction, and there was none to deliver me."
"It is in my heart to confess to God, and before men, my folly and
offence in that day; yet there were many things formed against me in
that day, to take away my life and bring scandal upon the truth, of
which I was not guilty at all." "The provocation of that Time of
Temptation was exceeding great against the Lord, yet He left me not; for
when Darkness was above, and the Adversary so prevailed that all things
were turned and perverted against my right seeing, hearing, or
understanding, only a secret hope and faith I had in my God, whom I had
served, that He would bring me through it and to the end of it, and that
I should again see the day of my redemption from under it all,--this
quieted my soul in its greatest tribulation." He concludes his
confession with these words: "He who hath saved my soul from death, who
hath lifted my feet up out of the pit, even to Him be glory forever; and
let every troubled soul trust in Him, for his mercy endureth forever!"
Among his papers, written soon after his release, is a remarkable prayer,
or rather thanksgiving. The limit I have prescribed to myself will only
allow me to copy an extract:--
"It is in my heart to praise Thee, O my God! Let me never forget Thee,
what Thou hast been to me in the night, by Thy presence in my hour of
trial, when I was beset in darkness, when I was cast out as a wandering
bird; when I was assaulted with strong temptations, then Thy presence, in
secret, did preserve me, and in a low state I felt Thee near me; when my
way was through the sea, when I passed under the mountains, there wast
Thou present with me; when the weight of the hills was upon me, Thou
upheldest me. Thou didst fight, on my part, when I wrestled with death;
when darkness would have shut me up, Thy light shone about me; when my
work was in the furnace, and I passed through the fire, by Thee I was not
consumed; when I beheld the dreadful visions, and was among the fiery
spirits, Thy faith staid me, else through fear I had fallen. I saw Thee,
and believed, so that the enemy could not prevail." After speaking of
his humiliation and sufferings, which Divine Mercy had overruled for his
spiritual good, he thus concludes: "Thou didst lift me out from the pit,
and set me forth in the sight of my enemies; Thou proclaimedst liberty to
the captive; Thou calledst my acquaintances near me; they to whom I had
been a wonder looked upon me; and in Thy love I obtained favor with those
who had deserted me. Then did gladness swallow up sorrow, and I forsook
my troubles; and I said, How good is it that man be proved in the night,
that he may know his folly, that every mouth may become silent, until
Thou makest man known unto himself, and has slain the boaster, and shown
him the vanity which vexeth Thy spirit."
All honor to the Quakers of that day, that, at the risk of
misrepresentation and calumny, they received back to their communion
their greatly erring, but deeply repentant, brother. His life, ever
after, was one of self-denial and jealous watchfulness over himself,--
blameless and beautiful in its humility and lowly charity.
Thomas Ellwood, in his autobiography for the year 1659, mentions Nayler,
whom he met in company with Edward Burrough at the house of Milton's
friend, Pennington. Ellwood's father held a discourse with the two
Quakers on their doctrine of free and universal grace. "James Nailer,"
says Ellwood, "handled the subject with so much perspicuity and clear
demonstration, that his reasoning seemed to be irresistible. As for
Edward Burrough, he was a brisk young Man, of a ready Tongue, and might
have been for aught I then knew, a Scholar, which made me less admire his
Way of Reasoning. But what dropt from James Nailer had the greater Force
upon me, because he lookt like a simple Countryman, having the appearance
of an Husbandman or Shepherd."
In the latter part of the eighth month, 1660, he left London on foot, to
visit his wife and children in Wakefield. As he journeyed on, the sense
of a solemn change about to take place seemed with him; the shadow of the
eternal world fell over him. As he passed through Huntingdon, a friend
who saw him describes him as "in an awful and weighty frame of mind, as
if he had been redeemed from earth, and a stranger on it, seeking a
better home and inheritance." A few miles beyond the town, he was found,
in the dusk of the evening, very ill, and was taken to the house of a
friend, who lived not far distant. He died shortly after, expressing his
gratitude for the kindness of his attendants, and invoking blessings upon
them. About two hours before his death, he spoke to the friend at his
bedside these remarkable words, solemn as eternity, and beautiful as the
love which fills it:--
"There is a spirit which I feel which delights to do no evil, nor to
avenge any wrong; but delights to endure all things, in hope to enjoy its
own in the end; its hope is to outlive all wrath and contention, and to
weary out all exultation and cruelty, or whatever is of a nature contrary
to itself. It sees to the end of all temptations; as it bears no evil in
itself, so it conceives none in thought to any other: if it be betrayed,
it bears it, for its ground and spring is the mercy and forgiveness of
God. Its crown is meekness; its life is everlasting love unfeigned; it
takes its kingdom with entreaty, and not with contention, and keeps it by
lowliness of mind. In God alone it can rejoice, though none else regard
it, or can own its life. It is conceived in sorrow, and brought forth
with none to pity it; nor doth it murmur at grief and oppression. It
never rejoiceth but through sufferings, for with the world's joy it is
murdered. I found it alone, being forsaken. I have fellowship therein
with them who lived in dens and desolate places of the earth, who through
death obtained resurrection and eternal Holy Life."
So died James Nayler. He was buried in "Thomas Parnell's burying-ground,
at King's Rippon," in a green nook of rural England. Wrong and violence,
and temptation and sorrow, and evil-speaking, could reach him no more.
And in taking leave of him, let us say, with old Joseph Wyeth, where he
touches upon this case in his _Anguis Flagellatus_: "Let none insult, but
take heed lest they also, in the hour of their temptation, do fall away."
ANDREW MARVELL
"They who with a good conscience and an upright heart do their civil
duties in the sight of God, and in their several places, to resist
tyranny and the violence of superstition banded both against them,
will never seek to be forgiven that which may justly be attributed
to their immortal praise."--Answer to Eikon Basilike.
Among, the great names which adorned the Protectorate,--that period of
intense mental activity, when political and religious rights and duties
were thoroughly discussed by strong and earnest statesmen and
theologians,--that of Andrew Marvell, the friend of Milton, and Latin
Secretary of Cromwell, deserves honorable mention. The magnificent prose
of Milton, long neglected, is now perhaps as frequently read as his great
epic; but the writings of his friend and fellow secretary, devoted like
his own to the cause of freedom and the rights of the people, are
scarcely known to the present generation. It is true that Marvell's
political pamphlets were less elaborate and profound than those of the
author of the glorious _Defence of Unlicensed Printing_. He was light,
playful, witty, and sarcastic; he lacked the stern dignity, the terrible
invective, the bitter scorn, the crushing, annihilating retort, the grand
and solemn eloquence, and the devout appeals, which render immortal the
controversial works of Milton. But he, too, has left his foot-prints on
his age; he, too, has written for posterity that which they "will not
willingly let die." As one of the inflexible defenders of English
liberty, sowers of the seed, the fruits of which we are now reaping, he
has a higher claim on the kind regards of this generation than his merits
as a poet, by no means inconsiderable, would warrant.
Andrew Marvell was born in Kingston-upon-Hull, in 1620. At the age of
eighteen he entered Trinity College, whence he was enticed by the
Jesuits, then actively seeking proselytes. After remaining with them a
short time, his father found him, and brought him back to his studies.
On leaving college, he travelled on the Continent. At Rome he wrote his
first satire, a humorous critique upon Richard Flecknoe, an English
Jesuit and verse writer, whose lines on Silence Charles Lamb quotes in
one of his Essays. It is supposed that he made his first acquaintance
with Milton in Italy.
At Paris he made the Abbot de Manihan the subject of another satire. The
Abbot pretended to skill in the arts of magic, and used to prognosticate
the fortunes of people from the character of their handwriting. At what
period he returned from his travels we are not aware. It is stated, by
some of his biographers, that he was sent as secretary of a Turkish
mission. In 1653, he was appointed the tutor of Cromwell's nephew; and,
four years after, doubtless through the instrumentality of his friend
Milton, he received the honorable appointment of Latin Secretary of the
Commonwealth. In 1658, he was selected by his townsmen of Hull to
represent them in Parliament. In this service he continued until 1663,
when, notwithstanding his sturdy republican principles, he was appointed
secretary to the Russian embassy. On his return, in 1665, he was again
elected to Parliament, and continued in the public service until the
prorogation of the Parliament of 1675.
The boldness, the uncompromising integrity and irreproachable consistency
of Marvell, as a statesman, have secured for him the honorable
appellation of "the British Aristides." Unlike too many of his old
associates under the Protectorate, he did not change with the times. He
was a republican in Cromwell's day, and neither threats of assassination,
nor flatteries, nor proffered bribes, could make him anything else in
that of Charles II. He advocated the rights of the people at a time when
patriotism was regarded as ridiculous folly; when a general corruption,
spreading downwards from a lewd and abominable Court, had made
legislation a mere scramble for place and emolument. English history
presents no period so disgraceful as the Restoration. To use the words
of Macaulay, it was "a day of servitude without loyalty and sensuality
without love, of dwarfish talents and gigantic vices, the paradise of
cold hearts and narrow minds, the golden age of the coward, the bigot,
and the slave. The principles of liberty were the scoff of every
grinning courtier, and the Anathema Maranatha of every fawning dean." It
is the peculiar merit of Milton and Marvell, that in such an age they
held fast their integrity, standing up in glorious contrast with clerical
apostates and traitors to the cause of England's liberty.
In the discharge of his duties as a statesman Marvell was as punctual and
conscientious as our own venerable Apostle of Freedom, John Quincy Adams.
He corresponded every post with his constituents, keeping them fully
apprised of all that transpired at Court or in Parliament. He spoke but
seldom, but his great personal influence was exerted privately upon the
members of the Commons as well as upon the Peers. His wit, accomplished
manners, and literary eminence made him a favorite at the Court itself.
The voluptuous and careless monarch laughed over the biting satire of the
republican poet, and heartily enjoyed his lively conversation. It is
said that numerous advances were made to him by the courtiers of Charles
II., but he was found to be incorruptible. The personal compliments of
the King, the encomiums of Rochester, the smiles and flatteries of the
frail but fair and high-born ladies of the Court; nay, even the golden
offers of the King's treasurer, who, climbing with difficulty to his
obscure retreat on an upper floor of a court in the Strand, laid a
tempting bribe of L1,000 before him, on the very day when he had been
compelled to borrow a guinea, were all lost upon the inflexible patriot.
He stood up manfully, in an age of persecution, for religious liberty,
opposed the oppressive excise, and demanded frequent Parliaments and a
fair representation of the people.
In 1672, Marvell engaged in a controversy with the famous High-Churchman,
Dr. Parker, who had taken the lead in urging the persecution of Non-
conformists. In one of the works of this arrogant divine, he says that
"it is absolutely necessary to the peace and government of the world that
the supreme magistrate should be vested with power to govern and conduct
the consciences of subjects in affairs of religion. Princes may with
less hazard give liberty to men's vices and debaucheries than to their
consciences." And, speaking of the various sects of Non-conformists, he
counsels princes and legislators that "tenderness and indulgence to such
men is to nourish vipers in their own bowels, and the most sottish
neglect of our quiet and security." Marvell replied to him in a severely
satirical pamphlet, which provoked a reply from the Doctor. Marvell
rejoined, with a rare combination of wit and argument. The effect of his
sarcasm on the Doctor and his supporters may be inferred from an
anonymous note sent him, in which the writer threatens by the eternal God
to cut his throat, if he uttered any more libels upon Dr. Parker. Bishop
Burnet remarks that "Marvell writ in a burlesque strain, but with so
peculiar and so entertaining a conduct 'that from the King down to the
tradesman his books were read with great pleasure, and not only humbled
Parker, but his whole party, for Marvell had all the wits on his side.'"
The Bishop further remarks that Marvell's satire "gave occasion to the
only piece of modesty with which Dr. Parker was ever charged, namely, of
withdrawing from town, and not importuning the press for some years,
since even a face of brass must grow red when it is burnt as his has
been."
Dean Swift, in commenting upon the usual fate of controversial pamphlets,
which seldom live beyond their generation, says: "There is indeed an
exception, when a great genius undertakes to expose a foolish piece; so
we still read Marvell's answer to Parker with pleasure, though the book
it answers be sunk long ago."
Perhaps, in the entire compass of our language, there is not to be found
a finer piece of satirical writing than Marvell's famous parody of the
speeches of Charles II., in which the private vices and public
inconsistencies of the King, and his gross violations of his pledges on
coming to the throne, are exposed with the keenest wit and the most
laugh-provoking irony. Charles himself, although doubtless annoyed by
it, could not refrain from joining in the mirth which it excited at his
expense.
The friendship between Marvell and Milton remained firm and unbroken to
the last. The former exerted himself to save his illustrious friend from
persecution, and omitted no opportunity to defend him as a politician and
to eulogize him as a poet. In 1654 he presented to Cromwell Milton's
noble tract in _Defence of the People of England_, and, in writing to the
author, says of the work, "When I consider how equally it teems and rises
with so many figures, it seems to me a Trajan's column, in whose winding
ascent we see embossed the several monuments of your learned victories."
He was one of the first to appreciate _Paradise Lost_, and to commend it
in some admirable lines. One couplet is exceedingly beautiful, in its
reference to the author's blindness:--
"Just Heaven, thee like Tiresias to requite,
Rewards with prophecy thy loss of sight."
His poems, written in the "snatched leisure" of an active political life,
bear marks of haste, and are very unequal. In the midst of passages of
pastoral description worthy of Milton himself, feeble lines and hackneyed
phrases occur. His _Nymph lamenting the Death of her Fawn_ is a finished
and elaborate piece, full of grace and tenderness. _Thoughts in a
Garden_ will be remembered by the quotations of that exquisite critic,
Charles Lamb. How pleasant is this picture!
"What wondrous life is this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head;
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine;
The nectarine and curious peach
Into my hands themselves do reach;
Stumbling on melons as I pass,
Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass.
"Here at this fountain's sliding foot,
Or at the fruit-tree's mossy root,
Casting the body's vest aside,
My soul into the boughs does glide.
There like a bird it sits and sings,
And whets and claps its silver wings;
And, till prepared for longer flight,
Waves in its plumes the various light.
"How well the skilful gard'ner drew
Of flowers and herbs this dial true!
Where, from above, the milder sun
Does through a fragrant zodiac run;
And, as it works, the industrious bee
Computes his time as well as we.
How could such sweet and wholesome hours
Be reckoned but with herbs and flowers!"
One of his longer poems, _Appleton House_, contains passages of admirable
description, and many not unpleasing conceits. Witness the following:--
"Thus I, an easy philosopher,
Among the birds and trees confer,
And little now to make me wants,
Or of the fowl or of the plants.
Give me but wings, as they, and I
Straight floating on the air shall fly;
Or turn me but, and you shall see
I am but an inverted tree.
Already I begin to call
In their most learned original;
And, where I language want, my signs
The bird upon the bough divines.
No leaf does tremble in the wind,
Which I returning cannot find.
Out of these scattered Sibyl's leaves,
Strange prophecies my fancy weaves:
What Rome, Greece, Palestine, e'er said,
I in this light Mosaic read.
Under this antic cope I move,
Like some great prelate of the grove;
Then, languishing at ease, I toss
On pallets thick with velvet moss;
While the wind, cooling through the boughs,
Flatters with air my panting brows.
Thanks for my rest, ye mossy banks!
And unto you, cool zephyrs, thanks!
Who, as my hair, my thoughts too shed,
And winnow from the chaff my head.
How safe, methinks, and strong behind
These trees have I encamped my mind!"
Here is a picture of a piscatorial idler and his trout stream, worthy of
the pencil of Izaak Walton:--
"See in what wanton harmless folds
It everywhere the meadow holds:
Where all things gaze themselves, and doubt
If they be in it or without;
And for this shade, which therein shines
Narcissus-like, the sun too pines.
Oh! what a pleasure 't is to hedge
My temples here in heavy sedge;
Abandoning my lazy side,
Stretched as a bank unto the tide;
Or, to suspend my sliding foot
On the osier's undermining root,
And in its branches tough to hang,
While at my lines the fishes twang."
A little poem of Marvell's, which he calls Eyes and Tears, has the
following passages:--
"How wisely Nature did agree
With the same eyes to weep and see!
That having viewed the object vain,
They might be ready to complain.
And, since the self-deluding sight
In a false angle takes each height,
These tears, which better measure all,
Like watery lines and plummets fall."
"Happy are they whom grief doth bless,
That weep the more, and see the less;
And, to preserve their sight more true,
Bathe still their eyes in their own dew;
So Magdalen, in tears more wise,
Dissolved those captivating eyes,
Whose liquid chains could, flowing, meet
To fetter her Redeemer's feet.
The sparkling glance, that shoots desire,
Drenched in those tears, does lose its fire;
Yea, oft the Thunderer pity takes,
And there his hissing lightning slakes.
The incense is to Heaven dear,
Not as a perfume, but a tear;
And stars shine lovely in the night,
But as they seem the tears of light.
Ope, then, mine eyes, your double sluice,
And practise so your noblest use;
For others, too, can see or sleep,
But only human eyes can weep."
The Bermuda Emigrants has some happy lines, as the following:--
"He hangs in shade the orange bright,
Like golden lamps in a green night."
Or this, which doubtless suggested a couplet in Moore's _Canadian Boat
Song_:--
"And all the way, to guide the chime,
With falling oars they kept the time."
His facetious and burlesque poetry was much admired in his day; but a
great portion of it referred to persons and events no longer of general
interest. The satire on Holland is an exception. There is nothing in
its way superior to it in our language. Many of his best pieces were
originally written in Latin, and afterwards translated by himself. There
is a splendid Ode to Cromwell--a worthy companion of Milton's glorious
sonnet--which is not generally known, and which we transfer entire to our
pages. Its simple dignity and the melodious flow of its versification
commend themselves more to our feelings than its eulogy of war. It is
energetic and impassioned, and probably affords a better idea of the
author, as an actor in the stirring drama of his time, than the "soft
Lydian airs" of the poems that we have quoted.
AN HORATIAN ODE UPON CROMWELL'S RETURN FROM IRELAND.
The forward youth that would appear
Must now forsake his Muses dear;
Nor in the shadows sing
His numbers languishing.
'T is time to leave the books in dust,
And oil the unused armor's rust;
Removing from the wall
The corslet of the hall.
So restless Cromwell could not cease
In the inglorious arts of peace,
But through adventurous war
Urged his active star.
And, like the three-forked lightning, first
Breaking the clouds wherein it nurst,
Did thorough his own side
His fiery way divide.
For 't is all one to courage high,
The emulous, or enemy;
And with such to enclose
Is more than to oppose.
Then burning through the air he went,
And palaces and temples rent;
And Caesar's head at last
Did through his laurels blast.
'T is madness to resist or blame
The face of angry Heaven's flame;
And, if we would speak true,
Much to the man is due,
Who, from his private gardens, where
He lived reserved and austere,
(As if his highest plot
To plant the bergamot,)
Could by industrious valor climb
To ruin the great work of time,
And cast the kingdoms old
Into another mould!
Though justice against fate complain,
And plead the ancient rights in vain,--
But those do hold or break,
As men are strong or weak.
Nature, that hateth emptiness,
Allows of penetration less,
And therefore must make room
Where greater spirits come.
What field of all the civil war,
Where his were not the deepest scar?
And Hampton shows what part
He had of wiser art;
Where, twining subtle fears with hope,
He wove a net of such a scope,
That Charles himself might chase
To Carisbrook's narrow case;
That hence the royal actor borne,
The tragic scaffold might adorn,
While round the armed bands
Did clap their bloody hands.
HE nothing common did or mean
Upon that memorable scene,
But with his keener eye
The axe's edge did try
Nor called the gods, with vulgar spite,
To vindicate his helpless right!
But bowed his comely head,
Down, as upon a bed.
This was that memorable hour,
Which first assured the forced power;
So when they did design
The Capitol's first line,
A bleeding head, where they begun,
Did fright the architects to run;
And yet in that the state
Foresaw its happy fate.
And now the Irish are ashamed
To see themselves in one year tamed;
So much one man can do,
That does best act and know.
They can affirm his praises best,
And have, though overcome, confest
How good he is, how just,
And fit for highest trust.
Nor yet grown stiffer by command,
But still in the Republic's hand,
How fit he is to sway
That can so well obey.
He to the Commons' feet presents
A kingdom for his first year's rents,
And, what he may, forbears
His fame to make it theirs.
And has his sword and spoils ungirt,
To lay them at the public's skirt;
So when the falcon high
Falls heavy from the sky,
She, having killed, no more does search,
But on the next green bough to perch,
Where, when he first does lure,
The falconer has her sure.
What may not, then, our isle presume,
While Victory his crest does plume?
What may not others fear,
If thus he crowns each year?
As Caesar, he, erelong, to Gaul;
To Italy as Hannibal,
And to all states not free
Shall climacteric be.
The Pict no shelter now shall find
Within his parti-contoured mind;
But from his valor sad
Shrink underneath the plaid,
Happy if in the tufted brake
The English hunter him mistake,
Nor lay his hands a near
The Caledonian deer.
But thou, the war's and fortune's son,
March indefatigably on;
And, for the last effect,
Still keep the sword erect.
Besides the force, it has to fright
The spirits of the shady night
The same arts that did gain
A power, must it maintain.
Marvell was never married. The modern critic, who affirms that bachelors
have done the most to exalt women into a divinity, might have quoted his
extravagant panegyric of Maria Fairfax as an apt illustration:--
"'T is she that to these gardens gave
The wondrous beauty which they have;
She straitness on the woods bestows,
To her the meadow sweetness owes;
Nothing could make the river be
So crystal pure but only she,--
She, yet more pure, sweet, strait, and fair,
Than gardens, woods, meals, rivers are
Therefore, what first she on them spent
They gratefully again present:
The meadow carpets where to tread,
The garden flowers to crown her head,
And for a glass the limpid brook
Where she may all her beauties look;
But, since she would not have them seen,
The wood about her draws a screen;
For she, to higher beauty raised,
Disdains to be for lesser praised;
She counts her beauty to converse
In all the languages as hers,
Nor yet in those herself employs,
But for the wisdom, not the noise,
Nor yet that wisdom could affect,
But as 't is Heaven's dialect."
It has been the fashion of a class of shallow Church and State defenders
to ridicule the great men of the Commonwealth, the sturdy republicans of
England, as sour-featured, hard-hearted ascetics, enemies of the fine
arts and polite literature. The works of Milton and Marvell, the prose-
poem of Harrington, and the admirable discourses of Algernon Sydney are a
sufficient answer to this accusation. To none has it less application
than to the subject of our sketch. He was a genial, warmhearted man, an
elegant scholar, a finished gentleman at home, and the life of every
circle which he entered, whether that of the gay court of Charles II.,
amidst such men as Rochester and L'Estrange, or that of the republican
philosophers who assembled at Miles's Coffee House, where he discussed
plans of a free representative government with the author of Oceana, and
Cyriack Skinner, that friend of Milton, whom the bard has immortalized in
the sonnet which so pathetically, yet heroically, alludes to his own
blindness. Men of all parties enjoyed his wit and graceful conversation.
His personal appearance was altogether in his favor. A clear, dark,
Spanish complexion, long hair of jetty blackness falling in graceful
wreaths to his shoulders, dark eyes, full of expression and fire, a
finely chiselled chin, and a mouth whose soft voluptuousness scarcely
gave token of the steady purpose and firm will of the inflexible
statesman: these, added to the prestige of his genius, and the respect
which a lofty, self-sacrificing patriotism extorts even from those who
would fain corrupt and bribe it, gave him a ready passport to the
fashionable society of the metropolis. He was one of the few who mingled
in that society, and escaped its contamination, and who,
"Amidst the wavering days of sin,
Kept himself icy chaste and pure."
The tone and temper of his mind may be most fitly expressed in his own
paraphrase of Horace:--
"Climb at Court for me that will,
Tottering Favor's pinnacle;
All I seek is to lie still!
Settled in some secret nest,
In calm leisure let me rest;
And, far off the public stage,
Pass away my silent age.
Thus, when, without noise, unknown,
I have lived out all my span,
I shall die without a groan,
An old, honest countryman.
Who, exposed to other's eyes,
Into his own heart ne'er pries,
Death's to him a strange surprise."
He died suddenly in 1678, while in attendance at a popular meeting of his
old constituents at Hull. His health had previously been remarkably
good; and it was supposed by many that he was poisoned by some of his
political or clerical enemies. His monument, erected by his grateful
constituency, bears the following inscription:--
"Near this place lyeth the body of Andrew Marvell, Esq., a man so
endowed by Nature, so improved by Education, Study, and Travel, so
consummated by Experience, that, joining the peculiar graces of Wit
and Learning, with a singular penetration and strength of judgment;
and exercising all these in the whole course of his life, with an
unutterable steadiness in the ways of Virtue, he became the ornament
and example of his age, beloved by good men, feared by bad, admired
by all, though imitated by few; and scarce paralleled by any. But a
Tombstone can neither contain his character, nor is Marble necessary
to transmit it to posterity; it is engraved in the minds of this
generation, and will be always legible in his inimitable writings,
nevertheless. He having served twenty years successfully in
Parliament, and that with such Wisdom, Dexterity, and Courage, as
becomes a true Patriot, the town of Kingston-upon-Hull, from whence
he was deputed to that Assembly, lamenting in his death the public
loss, have erected this Monument of their Grief and their Gratitude,
1688."
Thus lived and died Andrew Marvell. His memory is the inheritance of
Americans as well as Englishmen. His example commends itself in an
especial manner to the legislators of our Republic. Integrity and
fidelity to principle are as greatly needed at this time in our halls of
Congress as in the Parliaments of the Restoration; men are required who
can feel, with Milton, that "it is high honor done them from God, and a
special mark of His favor, to have been selected to stand upright and
steadfast in His cause, dignified with the defence of Truth and public
liberty."
JOHN ROBERTS.
Thomas Carlyle, in his history of the stout and sagacious Monk of St.
Edmunds, has given us a fine picture of the actual life of Englishmen in
the middle centuries. The dim cell-lamp of the somewhat apocryphal
Jocelin of Brakelond becomes in his hands a huge Drummond-light, shining
over the Dark Ages like the naphtha-fed cressets over Pandemonium,
proving, as he says in his own quaint way, that "England in the year 1200
was no dreamland, but a green, solid place, which grew corn and several
other things; the sun shone on it; the vicissitudes of seasons and human
fortunes were there; cloth was woven, ditches dug, fallow fields
ploughed, and houses built." And if, as the writer just quoted insists,
it is a matter of no small importance to make it credible to the present
generation that the Past is not a confused dream of thrones and battle-
fields, creeds and constitutions, but a reality, substantial as hearth
and home, harvest-field and smith-shop, merry-making and death, could
make it, we shall not wholly waste our time and that of our readers in
inviting them to look with us at the rural life of England two centuries
ago, through the eyes of John Roberts and his worthy son, Daniel, yeomen,
of Siddington, near Cirencester.
_The Memoirs of John Roberts, alias Haywood, by his son, Daniel Roberts_,
(the second edition, printed verbatim from the original one, with its
picturesque array of italics and capital letters,) is to be found only in
a few of our old Quaker libraries. It opens with some account of the
family. The father of the elder Roberts "lived reputably, on a little
estate of his own," and it is mentioned as noteworthy that he married a
sister of a gentleman in the Commission of the Peace. Coming of age
about the beginning of the civil wars, John and one of his young
neighbors enlisted in the service of Parliament. Hearing that
Cirencester had been taken by the King's forces, they obtained leave of
absence to visit their friends, for whose safety they naturally felt
solicitous. The following account of the reception they met with from
the drunken and ferocious troopers of Charles I., the "bravos of Alsatia
and the pages of Whitehall," throws a ghastly light upon the horrors of
civil war:--
"As they were passing by Cirencester, they were discovered, and pursued
by two soldiers of the King's party, then in possession of the town.
Seeing themselves pursued, they quitted their horses, and took to their
heels; but, by reason of their accoutrements, could make little speed.
They came up with my father first; and, though he begged for quarter,
none they would give him, but laid on him with their swords, cutting and
slashing his hands and arms, which he held up to save his head; as the
marks upon them did long after testify. At length it pleased the
Almighty to put it into his mind to fall down on his face; which he did.
Hereupon the soldiers, being on horseback, cried to each other, _Alight,
and cut his throat_! but neither of them did; yet continued to strike and
prick him about the jaws, till they thought him dead. Then they left
him, and pursued his neighbor, whom they presently overtook and killed.
Soon after they had left my father, it was said in his heart, _Rise, and
flee for thy life_! which call he obeyed; and, starting upon his feet,
his enemies espied him in motion, and pursued him again. He ran down a
steep hill, and through a river which ran at the bottom of it; though
with exceeding difficulty, his boots filling with water, and his wounds
bleeding very much. They followed him to the top of the hill; but,
seeing he had got over, pursued him no farther."
The surgeon who attended him was a Royalist, and bluntly told his
bleeding patient that if he had met him in the street he would have
killed him himself, but now he was willing to cure him. On his recovery,
young Roberts again entered the army, and continued in it until the
overthrow, of the Monarchy. On his return, he married "Lydia Tindall,
of the denomination of Puritans." A majestic figure rises before us,
on reading the statement that Sir Matthew Hale, afterwards Lord Chief
Justice of England, the irreproachable jurist and judicial saint, was
"his wife's kinsman, and drew her marriage settlement."
No stronger testimony to the high-toned morality and austere virtue of
the Puritan yeomanry of England can be adduced than the fact that, of the
fifty thousand soldiers who were discharged on the accession of Charles
II., and left to shift for themselves, comparatively few, if any, became
chargeable to their parishes, although at that very time one out of six
of the English population were unable to support themselves. They
carried into their farm-fields and workshops the strict habits of
Cromwell's discipline; and, in toiling to repair their wasted fortunes,
they manifested the same heroic fortitude and self-denial which in war
had made them such formidable and efficient "Soldiers of the Lord." With
few exceptions, they remained steadfast in their uncompromising non-
conformity, abhorring Prelacy and Popery, and entertaining no very
orthodox notions with respect to the divine right of Kings. From them
the Quakers drew their most zealous champions; men who, in renouncing the
"carnal weapons" of their old service, found employment for habitual
combativeness in hot and wordy sectarian warfare. To this day the
vocabulary of Quakerism abounds in the military phrases and figures which
were in use in the Commonwealth's time. Their old force and significance
are now in a great measure lost; but one can well imagine that, in the
assemblies of the primitive Quakers, such stirring battle-cries and
warlike tropes, even when employed in enforcing or illustrating the
doctrines of peace, must have made many a stout heart' to beat quicker,
tinder its drab coloring, with recollections of Naseby and Preston;
transporting many a listener from the benches of his place of worship to
the ranks of Ireton and Lambert, and causing him to hear, in the place of
the solemn and nasal tones of the preacher, the blast of Rupert's bugles,
and the answering shout of Cromwell's pikemen: "Let God arise, and let
his enemies be scattered!"
Of this class was John Roberts. He threw off his knapsack, and went back
to his small homestead, contented with the privilege of supporting
himself and family by daily toil, and grumbling in concert with his old
campaign brothers at the new order of things in Church and State. To his
apprehension, the Golden Days of England ended with the parade on
Blackheath to receive the restored King. He manifested no reverence for
Bishops and Lords, for he felt none. For the Presbyterians he had no
good will; they had brought in the King, and they denied the liberty of
prophesying. John Milton has expressed the feeling of the Independents
and Anabaptists towards this latter class, in that famous line in which
he defines Presbyter as "old priest writ large." Roberts was by no means
a gloomy fanatic; he had a great deal of shrewdness and humor, loved a
quiet joke; and every gambling priest and swearing magistrate in the
neighborhood stood in fear of his sharp wit. It was quite in course for
such a man to fall in with the Quakers, and he appears to have done so at
the first opportunity.
In the year 1665, "it pleased the Lord to send two women Friends out of
the North to Cirencester," who, inquiring after such as feared God, were
directed to the house of John Roberts. He received them kindly, and,
inviting in some of his neighbors, sat down with them, whereupon "the
Friends spake a few words, which had a good effect." After the meeting
was over, he was induced to visit a "Friend" then confined in Banbury
jail, whom he found preaching through the grates of his cell to the
people in the street. On seeing Roberts he called to mind the story of
Zaccheus, and declared that the word was now to all who were seeking
Christ by climbing the tree of knowledge, "Come down, come down; for that
which is to be known of God is manifested within." Returning home, he
went soon after to the parish meeting-house, and, entering with his hat
on, the priest noticed him, and, stopping short in his discourse,
declared that he could not go on while one of the congregation wore his
hat. He was thereupon led out of the house, and a rude fellow, stealing
up behind, struck him on the back with a heavy stone. "Take that for
God's sake," said the ruffian. "So I do," answered Roberts, without
looking back to see his assailant, who the next day came and asked his
forgiveness for the injury, as he could not sleep in consequence of it.
We next find him attending the Quarter Sessions, where three "Friends"
were arraigned for entering Cirencester Church with their hats on.
Venturing to utter a word of remonstrance against the summary proceedings
of the Court, Justice Stephens demanded his name, and, on being told,
exclaimed, in the very tone and temper of Jeffreys:
"I 've heard of you. I'm glad I have you here. You deserve a stone
doublet. There's many an honester man than you hanged."
"It may be so," said Roberts, "but what becomes of such as hang honest
men?"
The Justice snatched a ball of wax and hurled it at the quiet questioner.
"I 'll send you to prison," said he; "and if any insurrection or tumult
occurs, I 'll come and cut your throat with my own sword." A warrant was
made out, and he was forthwith sent to the jail. In the evening, Justice
Sollis, his uncle, released him, on condition of his promise to appear at
the next Sessions. He returned to his home, but in the night following
he was impressed with a belief that it was his duty to visit Justice
Stephens. Early in the morning, with a heavy heart, without eating or
drinking, he mounted his horse and rode towards the residence of his
enemy. When he came in sight of the house, he felt strong misgivings
that his uncle, Justice Sollis, who had so kindly released him, and his
neighbors generally, would condemn him for voluntarily running into
danger, and drawing down trouble upon himself and family. He alighted
from his horse, and sat on the ground in great doubt and sorrow, when a
voice seemed to speak within him, "Go, and I will go with thee." The
Justice met him at the door. "I am come," said Roberts, "in the fear
and dread of Heaven, to warn thee to repent of thy wickedness with speed,
lest the Lord send thee to the pit that is bottomless!" This terrible
summons awed the Justice; he made Roberts sit down on his couch beside
him, declaring that he received the message from God, and asked
forgiveness for the wrong he had done him.
The parish vicar of Siddington at this time was George Bull, afterwards
Bishop of St. David's, whom Macaulay speaks of as the only rural parish
priest who, during the latter part of the seventeenth century, was noted
as a theologian, or Who possessed a respectable library. Roberts refused
to pay the vicar his tithes, and the vicar sent him to prison. It was
the priest's "Short Method with Dissenters." While the sturdy Non-
conformist lay in prison, he was visited by the great woman of the
neighborhood, Lady Dunch, of Down Amney. "What do you lie in jail for?"
inquired the lady. Roberts replied that it was because he could not put
bread into the mouth of a hireling priest. The lady suggested that he
might let somebody else satisfy the demands of the priest; and that she
had a mind to do this herself, as she wished to talk with him on
religious subjects. To this Roberts objected; there were poor people who
needed her charities, which would be wasted on such devourers as the
priests, who, like Pharaoh's lean kine, were eating up the fat and the
goodly, without looking a whit the better. But the lady, who seems to
have been pleased and amused by the obstinate prisoner, paid the tithe
and the jail fees, and set him at liberty, making him fix a day when he
would visit her. At the time appointed he went to Down Amney, and was
overtaken on the way by the priest of Cirencester, who had been sent for
to meet the Quaker. They found the lady ill in bed; but she had them
brought to her chamber, being determined not to lose the amusement of
hearing a theological discussion, to which she at once urged them,
declaring that it would divert her and do her good. The parson began by
accusing the Quakers of holding Popish doctrines. The Quaker retorted
by telling him that if he would prove the Quakers like the Papists in one
thing, by the help of God, he would prove him like them in ten. After a
brief and sharp dispute, the priest, finding his adversary's wit too keen
for his comfort, hastily took his leave.
The next we hear of Roberts he is in Gloucester Castle, subjected to the
brutal usage of a jailer, who took a malicious satisfaction in thrusting
decent and respectable Dissenters, imprisoned for matters of conscience,
among felons and thieves. A poor vagabond tinker was hired to play at
night on his hautboy, and prevent their sleeping; but Roberts spoke to
him in such a manner that the instrument fell from his hand; and he told
the jailer that he would play no more, though he should hang him up at
the door for it.
How he was released from jail does not appear; but the narrative tells us
that some time after an apparitor came to cite him to the Bishop's Court
at Gloucester. When he was brought before the Court, Bishop Nicholson, a
kind-hearted and easy-natured prelate, asked him the number of his
children, and how many of them had been _bishoped_?
"None, that I know of," said Roberts.
"What reason," asked the Bishop, "do you give for this?"
"A very good one," said the Quaker: "most of my children were born in
Oliver's days, when Bishops were out of fashion."
The Bishop and the Court laughed at this sally, and proceeded to question
him touching his views of baptism. Roberts admitted that John had a
Divine commission to baptize with water, but that he never heard of
anybody else that had. The Bishop reminded him that Christ's disciples
baptized. "What 's that to me?" responded Roberts. "Paul says he was
not sent to baptize, but to preach the Gospel. And if he was not sent,
who required it at his hands? Perhaps he had as little thanks for his
labor as thou hast for thine; and I would willingly know who sent thee to
baptize?"
The Bishop evaded this home question, and told him he was there to answer
for not coming to church. Roberts denied the charge; sometimes he went
to church, and sometimes it came to him. "I don't call that a church
which you do, which is made of wood and stone."
"What do you call it?" asked the Bishop.
"It might be properly called a mass-house," was the reply; "for it was
built for that purpose." The Bishop here told him he might go for the
present; he would take another opportunity to convince him of his errors.
The next person called was a Baptist minister, who, seeing that Roberts
refused to put off his hat, kept on his also. The Bishop sternly
reminded him that he stood before the King's Court, and the
representative of the majesty of England; and that, while some regard
might be had to the scruples of men who made a conscience of putting off
the hat, such contempt could not be tolerated on the part of one who
could put it off to every mechanic be met. The Baptist pulled off his
hat, and apologized, on the ground of illness.
We find Roberts next following George Fox on a visit to Bristol. On his
return, reaching his house late in the evening, he saw a man standing in
the moonlight at his door, and knew him to be a bailiff.
"Hast thou anything against me?" asked Roberts.
"No," said the bailiff, "I've wronged you enough, God forgive me! Those
who lie in wait for you are my Lord Bishop's bailiffs; they are merciless
rogues. Ever, my master, while you live, please a knave, for an honest
man won't hurt you."