A Book of Quaker SaintsHodgkin, L. V. (Lucy Violet)
Religion
A Book of Quaker Saints
Hodgkin, L. V. (Lucy Violet)
Society of Friends
Nevertheless he felt it a grievous trial to give up all his prospects
of earthly advancement and become a Quaker. Yet from the day he
listened to George Fox preaching at Underbarrow there was no other
course open to him; though his own parents were much incensed with him
for daring to join this despised people. They even refused to
acknowledge him any longer as a member of their family. Being rejected
as a son, therefore, he begged to be allowed to stay on in his home
and work as a servant, but this, too, was refused. Thus being, as he
says, 'separated from all the glory of the world, and from all his
acquaintance and kindred,' he betook himself to the company of 'a
poor, despised people called Quakers.'
It must have been a comfort to him, after being cast off by his own
family, to find himself adopted by a still larger family of friends,
and to become one of the 'Valiant Sixty' entrusted with the great
adventure of Publishing Truth.
Riding along with good John Camm, with talk to beguile the way, was
pleasant travelling; but this happy companionship was not to last very
long. For as they journeyed and came near the 'Middle Kingdom,' or
Midlands, they fell in with another of 'Truth's Publishers.'
This was none other than their Westmorland neighbour, John Audland,
'the ruddy-faced linen-draper of Crosslands,' John Camm's own especial
comrade and pair among the 'Sixty.'
It may have been a prearranged plan that they should meet here; anyway
Camm turned aside with Audland and went on with him to Bristol, where
he had already begun to scatter the seed in the west of England, while
Edward Burrough pursued his journey in solitude towards London.[25]
But his days of loneliness were not to last for long. Either just
before or just after his arrival in the great city, two other
Publishers also reached the metropolis, one of whom, Francis Howgill,
was to be his own especial comrade and pair in the task of 'conquering
London.' This was that same Francis Howgill, a considerably older man
than Burrough, and formerly a leader among the Seekers, who had been
preaching that memorable day at Firbank when he thought George Fox
looked into the Chapel and was so much struck that 'you could have
killed him with a crab-apple.' Now that they had come together,
however, it would have taken more than many crab-apples to deter him
and Burrough from their Mission. Together the two friends laid their
plans for the capture of London, and together they proceeded to carry
them out. The success they met with was astonishing. 'By the arm of
the Lord,' writes Howgill, 'all falls before us, according to the word
of the Lord before I came to this City, that all should be as a
plain.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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