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BOOK REVIEWS51 Scots, English, Catholics and Protestants, as well as by native Irish and newly convinced Friends, all of whom Edmondson loved and served. Perhaps the most surprising aspect of Edmondson's life is die frequency and success of his efforts to speak Truth to power in high places. From George Fox to Raymond Wilson, Friends have been known for their open, frank, courageous lobbying efforts. Edmondson's Journal is a record of continuous efforts on his part, often under extreme duress as when he was himself a prisoner, applying to rough Irish rapparees, local justices, army officers, members of Parliament, even monarchs, to modify and improve their treatment of individuals in the name of Truth. Though one does not expect to find many personal or family details in early Friends' journals, Edmondson rewards the reader with insights into his own life. Among these are brief accounts of his first wife and their seven children (two of whom were given cryptic if not prophetic names— Hindrance and Tryal); the death of his wife after the burning and plundering of their home and shameful mistreatment; his second marriage at the age of nearly 70, with careful study and consent by family and Friends. That Edmondson survived the difficult seventeenth-century travel, illness, imprisonment, and numerous tragedies and still won wide approval and support for his interpretation of Christianity as an "honest man," is in itself a testimony to what Friends may rightfully attribute to the work of the Lord. The carefully chosen sections of the Journal, less than half of the 1820 edition, are supplemented by a typically helpful, short historical "Foreword" by Henry Joel Cadbury, and by frequent, very brief, luminous paragraphs by Caroline Jacob throughout the nine chapters, thus giving unity to the entire story of Edmondson's life from 1627 to 1712, and to the rise of Quakerism in England, Ireland, and the Americas. I know of no other such attractive, small, modern edition of an early Quaker document which has so much potential for contemporary Friends in giving a depth of understanding for die planting of Quakerism or inspiration for continued, courageous commitment. I hope this volume will have the wide and careful reading which it deserves. Guilford CollegeJ. Floyd Moore Chain of Friendship: Selected Letters of Dr. John Fothergill of London, 1735-1780. With introduction and notes by Betsy C. Corner and Christopher C. Booth. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 1971. xxvi, 538 pp. Illustrations, bibliography, index. $20.00. This handsomely produced volume contains about two hundred letters written by John Fothergill, the public-spirited Quaker physician, to correspondents in England and America. Dr. Fothergill was not a consistently interesting reporter, but he led such an active and variegated career that his letters disclose a great deal about English Quaker life, transatlantic Quaker relations, medical practices, botanical collecting, scientific books, Pennsylvania politics, and die political atmosphere in London before and during the American Revolution. The letters which Mrs. Corner and Dr. Booth have selected for publication fall into three principal groups: (1) 52QUAKER HISTORY family correspondence, mainly with his brothers in Lancashire and Yorkshire, offering glimpses of the spiritual bonds which drew this family together and the psychological tensions which tore it apart; (2) medical and scientific correspondence, including a number of interesting letters to John and William Bartram, who collected American specimens for Dr. Fothergill; and (3) Anglo-American Quaker correspondence, mainly with Israel and James Pemberton, full of comment on Pennsylvania politics in the 1740's and 1750's and on the revolutionary crisis in the 1760's and 1770's. This edition has some shortcomings. The editors have assembled nearly four hundred Fothergill letters, but do not bother to calendar, or even list, the many documents which they chose not to print. Their annotations are much more satisfying in matters medical than in matters political, and they have made some unfortunate errors, as when Dr. Fothergill's alarm at Pontiac's Rebellion in 1763 (p. 231) is misidentified as concern about the Six Nations. The editors seem oblivious to their hero's exposed position as a rich and fashionable figure in a time of Quaker moral crisis. Yet their...

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