GEORGE FOX.

As a young man of less than thirty years of age, Fox had wandered from Church to Conventicle, from Conventicle to Church, in search of the truth. When he went for counsel, one priest, he states, "bade me take tobacco and sing psalms. Tobacco was a thing I did not love, and psalms I was not in a state to sing. I could not sing." In other sects, too, Fox found there were blind guides, and after roaming about for some time, he began to preach his own views, and in season and out of season to force them upon public attention. He wandered from place to place, he entered the Steeple Houses, as he named the Churches, and he argued theology with the parsons with a persistency which, even when his arguments perhaps were not of the soundest, often won him the day. He was soon well known, and his strange face, his strange chant, his immovable hat, were known all over the country. At Derby, he was brought before Justice Bennett, whom he bade to tremble at the word of the Lord. In reply the Justice called him a Quaker, and the name has outlived the earlier name which Fox's followers adoptedthat of "The Children of Light." He was repeatedly imprisoned and set in the stocks, but he soon gathered round him a body of followers, some of whom went far beyond him in their enthusiasm.

From Lancaster, Fox journeyed through Westmoreland to that old hall on the north side of Ulverston which was the scene of so many striking passages in the early history of the Society of Friends. Swarthmoor Hall was the seat of Thomas. Fell, a barrister, of Lincoln Inn. In the Civil War he had leaned to the side of the Parliament, and in 1645 was

'Macaulay's History of England, chapter xvii.

returned as one of the members for the Borough of Lancaster. In 1648 he became a Judge of Assize, and was afterwards made Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. His wife, Margaret Fell, was a descendant of the Askews, of Marsh Grange, near Kirkby Ireleth, and her great grandmother, Anne Askew, had been burnt at the stake, on account of her religious convictions, v in the closing days of Henry VIII.

From Swarthmoor, Fox went with Judge Fell to Lancaster, and appeared at the Sessions to answer a charge of blasphemy. Opposed to him were some forty of the local clergy, with the Vicar of Lancaster at their head. Notwithstanding the arguments of the clergy, the charge broke down, and one of the magistrates, Colonel West, told Fox that if he had anything to say to the people he might freely declare it. Fox says that he was moved of the Lord to speak, and the walls of the old Crown Court rang with the echoes of the voice of the Founder of the Society of Friends, until the multitude rushed from the Castle, and proclaimed in the streets of Lancaster the triumph of the cause of the Children of Light.

Again at the Assizes following, the efforts to get a warrant against Fox failed, and that night he entered Lancaster, and in his own words "I stayed in town till the judge went out of town, and I walked up and down the town, but no one meddled with me or questioned me."

In 1654 and 1657, Fox was again at Lancaster, travelling in the meantime over nearly the whole of Southern England and Wales. In 1658 he saw for the last time the Great Protector, and placed before him the sufferings of Friends. Cromwell died three days later, and the following month Judge Fell passed away, and was buried by torchlight, beneath his pew, in Ulverston Church.

In 1660, Fox was again at Swarthmoor, and when there the constables arrived with a warrant for his arrest, signed by Henry Porter, Mayor of Lancaster, a gentleman who had been particularly active on the side of the Parliament during the Civil

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War, and who, now that the tables were turned, posed as a strenuous supporter of Charles II.

From Swarthmoor, Fox was taken to Ulverston, where he was kept under a guard of fifteen or sixteen men, some of whom sat in the chimney for fear he should escape that way.

Being brought before the Mayor of Lancaster he was charged with being an enemy to the King, with endeavouring to raise a new war and imbrue the nation in blood. On this charge he was committed to prison, and from the Castle he issued a strong denial of the charges brought against him. Margaret Fell, indignant at the treatment Fox had received in her house, sent out an energetic protest against the high-handed proceedings of Justice Porter. Following up her protest, Margaret Fell proceeded to London to interview the King, and Fox's account of the effect of her measures upon the Mayor merits quotation :"When Justice Porter heard of her going he vapoured that he would go and meet her in the gap. But when he came before the King, having been a zealous man for the Parliament against the King, several of the courtiers spoke to him concerning his plundering their houses; so that he quickly had enough of the Court, and returned to Lancaster.. There

I sent him a letter which still further disquieted him, for I reminded him how fierce he had been against the King and his party, how that when he held the Castle for the Parliament against the King he was so rough and fierce against them that favoured the King that he said 'he would leave them neither dog nor cat if they did not bring him provision into the Castle.' I asked him also 'Whose great bucks' horns those were in his house, and where he had both them and the wainscot from that he ceiled his house withal; had he them not from Hornby Castle?""

Altogether, the Mayor found himself in a difficulty, and perhaps he was not a little relieved to find that Margaret Fell had obtained an order from the King for the removal of Fox to London. The Writ for his removal was therefore sent down, and after nearly six months' discussion over its terms, and as to the escort

which was to take Fox to London, Fox eventually relieved the Sheriff from a difficulty by undertaking to carry his own warrant to London. The judges at Westminster, were, however, somewhat surprised to see a grave man walk into their Court, and quietly produce from his pocket a Writ which charged him with embroiling the nation in blood. No one appeared against him, the matter was referred to the King, and that good-natured monarch ordered his release.

Three years later Fox was again at Lancaster. He had been summoned to a meeting of Justices at Holker Hall, and Margaret Fell had accompanied him. At the head of the table sat old Lawyer Rawlinson, who lived at that quaint old Hall still standing on the roadside between Cartmel and Cark. Next to him sat Thomas Preston, the owner of Holker, who, fifteen years later, according to his inscription in Cartmel Church, "emigravit in coelis." And next to Preston sat Sir George Middleton, the last of the Middletons of Leighton Hall, a memorial tablet to whose memory is still attached to one of the pillars in Warton Church. After a lengthy argument in which Fox had the advantage throughout, the oath was tendered to him at the instance of Sir George Middleton. He refused to take it, and was required to appear at the Sessions at Lancaster.

"The Session," writes Fox, was large and the concourse great, and way being made for me I came up to the bar and stood there with my hat on, they looking earnestly upon me and I upon them for a pretty space. Proclamation being made for all to keep silence upon pain of imprisonment, and all being quiet, I said twice ‘Peace be among you.'"

Then of course followed an argument about the hat, which was eventually removed by order of the Court. The oath was tendered and refused on conscientious grounds, and Fox was committed to prison.

The Sessions were long, and it was late before Fox was led up the steep steps to his prison in the common ward.

At the Assizes on the 14th March, 1664, Fox was brought up again, and again came the argument about the hat and the refusal to take the oath, which ended in his being remanded to the next Assizes. Before that time, Margaret Fell was committed to prison, and the walls of Lancaster Castle looked down upon the great granddaughter of Anne Askew imprisoned for conscience sake.

In September, 1664, George Fox and Margaret Fell were brought up in the old Crown Court, and Fox requested the judge "to send some one to see my prison which was so bad they would put no creature they had in it.' . . . Some of the justices went up to see it, but when they came they durst hardly go into it for the floor was so bad and dangerous, and the place so open to wind and rain."

Fox raised so many objections to the indictment that the judge, finding it worthless, tendered him the oath. After a long argument he was remanded to the next Assizes, and Colonel Kirby, the sheriff, gave order to the jailer "to keep me close and suffer no flesh alive to come at me, for he is not fit to be discoursed with by men.' Then I was put into a tower where the smoke of the other prisoners came up so thick that it stood as dew upon the walls, and sometimes it was so thick that I could scarcely see the candle when it burned, and I being locked under three locks, the under-gaoler, when the smoke was great, would hardly be persuaded to come up to unlock one of the uppermost doors for fear of the smoke, so that I was almost smothered. Besides, it rained in upon my bed. . . . In this manner did I lie all that long cold winter till the next Assize; in which time I was so starved with cold and rain that my body was greatly swelled and my limbs much benumbed."

At the Assizes in March, 1665, sentence of premunire was passed on George Fox and Margaret Fell, a sentence which involved forfeiture of estates and imprisonment during the King's pleasure. Six weeks later Fox was carried down the steps of the prison, for he was too weak to walk, and mounted on