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c h a p te r 4 ‘‘Bastard Quakers’’ in America The Keithian Schism and the Creation of Creole Quakerism in Early Pennsylvania, 1691–1693 The Proclamation by 25 august 1692, Philadelphia’s justices had had enough of George Keith. What had begun as a conflict among ministers within the Quaker Meeting over the nature of Christ’s incarnate and resurrected body had escalated, leading Keith to public criticism not just of the Meeting but of prominent Friends in government as well. Upset at these attacks on their character in conversation and print, city magistrates drafted a ‘‘Publick Writing’’ warning Keith of the consequences of continuing the political and religious dispute that had begun last year. Their paper was then ‘‘proclaimed by the Common Crier in the Market place against G.K.’’1 The crier opened by announcing the justices’ opinion ‘‘that George Keith . . . did, contrary to his Duty, publickly revile’’ Thomas Lloyd, the province’s deputy governor. He then proceeded to list the insults Keith had levied against Lloyd. Keith, the crier shouted, had ‘‘call[ed] him [Lloyd] an impudent Man, telling him he was not fit to be Governour, and that his Name would stink, with many other slighting and abusive expressions.’’ Nor was that the last of Keith’s offenses; the crier also reported that Keith had questioned some of the magistrates’ recent actions ‘‘with an unusual insolency’’ and that by publishing these disagreements he and William Bradford, the colony’s only printer, had ‘‘laboured to possess the Readers of their Pamphlet That it is inconsistent for those who are Ministers of the Gospel to act as Magistrates.’’ 150 chapter 4 The crier stressed that this public condemnation of Keith and his followers resulted from neither personal nor sectarian partisanship. The county’s Quaker justices could endure the Keithians’ ‘‘many personal Reflections against us, and their gross Reveilings of our Religious Society.’’ But to ‘‘pass by or connive at such part of the said Pamphlet and Speeches, that have a tendency to Sedition or Disturbance of the Peace’’ would violate ‘‘our Trust to the King and Governour, as also to the Inhabitants of this Government,’’ making them poor civic stewards. ‘‘Therefore, for the undeceiving of all People ,’’ the justices ‘‘have thought fit by this Publick Writing . . . to Caution such who are well affected to the Security, Peace, and Legal Administration of Justice in this place, that they give no Countenance to any Revilers and Contemners of Authority, Magistrates, or Magistracy.’’ He added as warning ‘‘to all other persons, that they forbear the future publishing and spreading of the Pamphlet, as they will answer the contrary at their Peril.’’ The recent arrest of Bradford and his assistant John McComb for printing and distributing Keithian pamphlets attested to the seriousness of this warning. Finally the justices, for good measure, took efforts to ensure that this proclamation would be posted in ‘‘Town and Country’’ throughout the province.2 On the face of it, this public proclamation seems an odd choice of action for the aggrieved Philadelphia justices. By ordering a declaration written in ‘‘Private Sessions’’ among the judges to be read in the city marketplace, they had made public the very insults against Lloyd and themselves that they had desired, through prohibiting them, to keep private.3 Moreover, their use of a town crier to promulgate their message would appear to be the wrong medium given their stated goal of the ‘‘undeceiving of all People.’’ Why counter Keith’s print with speech? If they hoped to reach ‘‘all People,’’ why rely on speech, a medium of communication they believed more local—and therefore less likely to reach a wider audience—than print?4 In lieu of fighting fire with fire and engaging the Keithians in a public dialogue through print, Keith’s opponents had attempted to seize political legitimacy by staging a public reading of their own authority.5 Rather than win the public over through persuasion, they sought compliance through assertion.6 The Philadelphia County justices who issued the August 1692 proclamation—all of whom were Quaker ministers—had intended it to be the end of public discussion of the Keithian schism, not the beginning. They had sent the town crier to the public marketplace not to exchange words but to pronounce them authoritatively, as if from on high.7 They had spoken to and for the colony, just as Quaker ministers spoke to and for the entire Meeting. [18.217.73.187] Project MUSE (2024-04...

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