From Gretna Green to Land's End: A Literary Journey in England. — John Shaqi
From Gretna Green to Land's End: A Literary Journey in England.Bates, Katharine Lee
General
From Gretna Green to Land's End: A Literary Journey in England.
Bates, Katharine Lee
England -- Description and travel
Refusing, as a Quaker must needs refuse, to take the oath of
supremacy, Mistress Fell stood her trial in 1663, her four daughters
beside her. Her arguments irritated the judge into exclaiming that she
had "an everlasting tongue," and he condemned her to imprisonment for
life, with confiscation of all her property to the Crown. But after
some five years of Lancaster's grim hospitality she was released, and
forthwith set out on a series of visits to those English jails in
which Quakers were immured. It was not until eleven years after Judge
Fell's death that she married George Fox. The courtship is summarised
in Fox's "Journal": "I had seen from the Lord a considerable time
before that I should take Margaret Fell to be my wife; and when I
first mentioned it to her she felt the answer from God thereto." Yet
after the marriage, as before, they pursued, in the main, their
separate paths of preaching, journeying, and imprisonment. It was
seven years before illness brought Fox to Swarthmoor, which had been
restored to the family, for a brief rest. About a quarter of a mile
from the mansion, stood a dwelling-house in its three or four acres of
land. This modest estate Fox purchased and gave it "to the Lord, for
the service of his sons and daughters and servants called Quakers....
And also my ebony bedstead, with painted curtains, and the great
elbow-chair that Robert Widder sent me, and my great sea case with the
bottles in it I do give to stand in the house as heirlooms, when the
house shall be made use of as a meeting-place, that Friends may have a
bed to lie on, a chair to sit on, and a bottle to hold a little water
for drink." He adds: "Slate it and pave the way to it and about it,
that Friends may go dry to their meeting. You may let any poor,
honest Friend live in the house, and so let it be for the Lord's
service, to the end of the world."
A deep hawthorn lane, winding to the left, led us to that apostolic
meeting-house, well-nigh hidden from the road by its high, grey,
ivy-topped wall. We passed through a grassy outer court into an inner
enclosure thick-set with larches, hollies, and wild cherry. The paths
are paved. Luxuriant ivy curtains porch and wall, and clambers up over
the low tower. Above the door is inscribed:
_Ex dono G. F._, 1682.
The meeting-room within is of Quaker plainness, with drab-tinted
walls. The settees are hard and narrow, though a few "at the top" are
allowed the creature comforts of cushions. Only the posts are left of
the ebony bedstead, but two elbow-chairs of carven oak, a curiously
capacious and substantial travelling-chest, and a Bible still are
shown as Fox's personal belongings. The Bible is a black-letter folio
of 1541, the Treacle Bible, open at the third chapter of Jeremiah,
where, in the last verse, comes the query: "Is not there any tryacle
in Gylyad?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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