An Epistle to Friends in Zeeland, 1680, from Roger Longworth, (c. 1630-1687)

An Epistle to Friends in Zeeland, 1680, from Roger Longworth, (c 1630-1687) Rosamund H. Cummings* "A Friend who travelled 'by land 20,000 miles and by water not much less' in the service ofthe Lord," so wrote Phineas Pemberton and William Yardley, in 1687, in their Testimony to the life and work of Roger Longworth.1 Although Roger Longworth left us no journal ofhis travels, it isclear frommentions ofhimandreferences to himbyhis contemporaries that he must indeed have covered that many miles. We have records ofhis travelling throughout England, visiting Scotland, and twice crossing the Irish sea to Ireland. However, it was to Holland and northern Germany that he felt his strongest calling, and, once those Friends who had left these areas, where they were being persecuted, for the more tolerant parts ofthe New World, he travelled across the Atlantic to visit them there. Roger Longworth died in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, probably at the home ofhis friend Phineas Pemberton, in August 1687, ofa fever.2 He had returned not long before from ajourney to Barbadoes and Jamaica, having felt the call to visit the small groups of Friends living there. That journey was the last ofmany made through the British Isles, northern Europe and the New World in the Service of Truth. Little is known of Roger Longworth's early life. He came from Longworth, near Bolton in Lancashire, where he was born about 1630. He appears to have been converted to Quakerism by James Harrison, a shoemaker to whom Longworth bound himself as an apprentice, in 1661.3 Between 1669 and 1670 Longworth was imprisoned three times for attending Quaker Meetings, once in Chester Castle, once in Lancaster Castle, and again in Newgate Prison, London.4 Roger Longworth was acknowledged as aminister ofthe Society ofFriends, when he preached at meetings in London, in 1672, and spent the remainder ofhis life travelling in the service of Friends.5 As early as 1655 Friends were concerned with the spiritual welfare of people in Europe, and, as the religious wars of the seventeenth century progressed, made missionary journeys to preach the gospel ofthe children ofthe Light. While most ofthesejourneys began and ended in Amsterdam, where it was easy to obtain shipping for England, and many converts were made in that city, the Friends spread out from there, travelling as far north and east as Hamburg and Danzig and as far south as Turkey and Rome. * Rosamund H. Cummings is Record Manager at University College, London. She has a degree in Modern and Medieval History and The Diploma in Archives Administration from The University of London. 46Quaker History Some of these journeys included visits to the southern Dutch state of Zeeland, and the university city ofLeiden, where Protestant sects had long been established, and from where other beliefs had been disseminated. William Ames was probably the first Quaker missionary to the United Provinces ofHolland, visiting there in 1655, and travelling on to Hamburg where he made several conversions. He was in Leiden in 1656, where he experienced opposition from the Mennonites. William Ames returned to Leiden in 1659, eithertravelling with ormeeting a Friend, PieterHendricks, who had left his home town of Hamburg in order to escape persecution. Unfortunately neither escaped persecution: the Synod of South Holland, which was held in Gouda in that year, specifically prescribed against Quakers, and the two men were expelled from Leiden and returned to Amsterdam.6 However, their message had not gone unheard: a printer, Jan Smet, started to print Quaker tracts in Leiden in 1659, and by 1663 was so well established that George Fox was requesting that his unpublished writings should be sent to Jan Smet for publication in both English and Dutch.7 William Caton was also an early missionary to Holland, visting Leiden in 1658, 1660, 1664, and 1665. Personal visits were not the only way of contacting potential converts; early pamphlets were also published in Dutch, such as the one published in 1659 by Christopher Birkhead, which was used as a basis for the charges against Quakers at Leiden.8 By 1668/9, when George Fox was establishing the system of Monthly and Quarterly Metings in England, Friends in Holland were sonumerous thathe...