A Letter from Richard Farnworth, 1652

A Letter from Richard Farnworth, 1652 H. Larry Ingle* A revealing letter in the hand of Richard Farnworth to George Fox sometime in 1652, ' published for the first time below, calls into question a number of points of received historical wisdom, but it settles, finally, only one. Still that one is worth settling. Margaret Fell (1614-1702), mistress of Swarthmoor Hall in Lancashire and, safe to say, Fox's most important early convert, wrote a testimony to her deceased second husband for the first edition (1694) of the Journal orHistoricalAccount oftheLife, Travels, Sufferings, and Christian Experiences of George Fox. She explained that after his first appearance at her home in late June 1652 and her sudden convincement, Fox used her home as a kind of headquarters between preaching missions to nearby towns. "And about two weeks after," she remembered , "James Naylor and Richard Farnsworth followed him, and enquired him out, till they came to Swarthmore. . . ."2 The picture conveyed is of Nayler and Farnworth wandering around the countryside searching and inquiring after their absent friend until they arrived by chance at Swarthmoor Hall. As Farnworth's letter shows, however, he had an invitation to hurry to Swarthmoor from a person seemingly unknown to him, one "M:ff:," or Margaret Fell. Farnworth's and Nayler's appearance therefore was not nearly the happenstance that Fell's faulty recollection implied. * H. Larry Ingle is professor of history, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga , and is currently working on a biography of George Fox. Permission to publish this letter has been granted by the Library of the Society of Friends, London. The author should like to thank the Bequests Committee of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and the Faculty Research Committee of the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga for supplying some of the funds that made research for this article possible. 1.Swarthmore Manuscripts, III, 53, Library of the Society of Friends, London , and on microfilm. "Farnworth" is used here, although "Farnsworth" was also used and is more common in other published sources. 2.Journal . . . ofGeorge Fox, ed. Thomas Ellwood (London: no pubi. 1694) iii. Historians, even those who used the Swarthmore Manuscripts containing Farnworth's letter, have followed Fell's account. See for examples, Isabel Ross, Margaret Fell: Mother ofQuakerism (York, Eng.: William Sessions, 1984; 2nd ed.) 14, and William C. Braithwaite, The Beginnings of Quakers (York, Eng.: William Sessions, 1981; 2nd ed.) 75, 102. Braithwaite examined Farnworth's letter, assigning it "early in 1653," though this date cannot be confirmed on the basis of the document itself. See Braithwaite, Beginnings, 58, note 6. By placing the date early in 1653 Braithwaite avoided the disagreement between Fell's memory and Farnworth's more contemporaneous account. 36Quaker History That point settled, the letter raises even more questions, primarily because its exact date is unknown. About all we can say is that it had to be near the middle of 1652, definitely before Farnworth met Fell in early July. The year is an important one, for 1652 was the year of the Quaker explosion in the northern and western part ofEngland after a lengthy gestation period of nearly six years in the Midlands. As far as is known, Fox did not know of the Fell family until he, as Margaret Fell erroneously recalled about Farnworth and Nayler, happened to appear at her doorstep. But Fox did know Richard Farnworth (d. 1666), one of his earliest disciples in the North,3 and was close enough to travel with him. A native of Tickhill in Yorkshire, Farnworth, as the leading authority on early Quakerism informs us, was ''next to Fox, the chiefleader in the North ofthe new movement" and one whose reputation as a dissenter was well established before he formally pitched in his lot with the Children of Truth.4 What if the plea from "M:ff:" to which Farnworth referred came before Fox showed up at Swarthmoor Hall? What if her apparently unsolicited letter came as a result of Fell's own personal seeking to one well known as a proponent of reformed religion? What if Fox went there in the first place because Farnworth informed him earlier of Fell's earnest entreaty? On the other hand, if...