The Quakers and the English Legal System, 1668-1688 (review)

Book Reviews49 made by members of the House during the Nayler trial there lay momentous questions about the authority of Parliament, the validity of the new written constitution (the Instrument of Government), the powers of the Lord Protector , the need for an "other house" (i.e. of Lords) and even whether or not England should again become a monarchy. Employing some thirty statistical tables in his appendix, Bittle analyzes the participation, attitudes and motives of the MP's who spoke and voted on the Quaker's fate. There appear to be some interesting correlations between political positions and stands taken on Nayler's punishment. Though Nayler's life was narrowly spared, he was subjected to a barbarous punishment and then kept incarcerated for nearly three years. As the Interregnum was drawing towards its confused close in 1659, he was released and soon was able to resume his ministry. He even had a superficial reconciliation with George Fox, once he had agreed to kneel before him. Bittle finds no evidence, however, that Fox ever really forgave him. The whole episode brought some long-range benefit in that it "cooled the ardor of the more demonstrative Friends, and, to a large extent, checked any more displays of such unrestrained enthusiasm" (p. 174). Had this not happened, Bittle thinks, Quakerism would not have survived. That this book, based on Prof. Bittle's doctoral dissertation, makes a valuable contribution to our knowledge of seventeenth-century English religious and political development cannot be denied. While not all may be interested in the details of the parliamentary debate covered in Chapters V and VI, scholars will find them useful, even fascinating. The Nayler story, especially in William Bittle's presentation of it, calls to our attention the disturbing subject of blasphemy. Few today would approve James Nayler's bizarre, and probably psychopathic, behavior on that rainy October afternoon in 1656. But how much more ought we not be appalled that respected men in high positions should have advocated mutilating him or putting him to death for what he did or allowed others to do. In such cases it is usual to say that these men were the products of their time, not ours, and should so be judged. Yet unfortunately we have ample occasion to observe that even in our day and world angry religious fanaticism, expressed in violent acts and supported by the power of the state, is not yet everywhere considered unacceptable. University of Wisconsin - Eau ClaireHoward T. Lutz The Quakers and the English Legal System, 1668-1688. By Craig W. Horle. Phila.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988. xvi, 320 pp. $34.95. Neither early Friends nor their judges and jailors fully knew or understood the intricate laws and court processes under which Quakers suffered; in forty years of learning each side grew more sophisticated. Modern readers equally perplexed will learn more rapidly from Craig Horle's study. His scholarly role as the writer of five recent articles and a doctoral thesis on 17th Century Quakers and the Law clearly enriched his role as a member of the research team that prepared the four volumes of the Papers of William Penn under Richard and Mary Maples Dunn, and vice versa. Those projects also undergird this book. He uses many sources on English law, notably J.S. Cockburn on the Assizes, Matthew Hale on the Common Law and Sir William Holdsworth's History, 50Quaker History but his most fully used sources seem to be the 44 manuscript volumes of "the Great Book of Sufferings," the Minutes of the Meeting for Sufferings and other Quaker manuscripts (from which Joseph Besse condensed his two-folio Collection ofthe Sufferings of 1753). Admitting that "religious criminality is rather unexciting," Horle remains remarkably impartial and alert to misuses of laws by any party. His introduction on the social roles and goals of early Friends draws mainly on other scholars but avoids cliches and theology. His chapter on the "Wilderness" of the English Law should make clearer to Americans the centrality of unwritten precedents in the Common Law, and the overlapping jurisdictions of justices of the peace at Quarter Sessions, judges of the central royal courts at the assizes, and the...