George Fox and the Royal Society

90Bulletin of Friends Historical Association Notes and Documents GEORGE FOX AND THE ROYAL SOCIETY By Henry J. Cadbury In writing about Penn, Collinson, and the Royal Society in this Bulletin (36 [1947], 19 ff.), I knew that in the long history of that Society Friends have had an important part, "forty times their quota of Fellows in proportion to their numbers." But it never occurred to me that George Fox knew the Society and even played on its name. That I think is definitely shown in his essay The Royal Law of God revived: Wherein you may see that all Nations of men may keep in it a Royal Society, &c. This closely-printed 44-page essay was published in 1672 about halfway between the date of the formation of the Royal Society in 1660 and the election to it in 1681 of William Penn. Taking as his two texts the passage in James 2:8 about the "royal law of liberty" and what we call the Golden Rule, Fox argues that since all men have something of God in them, whether Jews, Turks, heathen, or Christians, and since all creeds and worships are man-made, persecution for religion is not doing to all men as we would have them do to us. He stoutly upholds the universality of what is technically called "natural religion." The society Fox speaks of is not the Society of Friends but the tolerant fellowship of all religions of mankind . All "would have liberty in a common society." That the term Royal Society is not an accidental combination of words is shown by its recurrence several times in the text, for example: So then it may he seen here, that there is something of God in man, to answer his Royal Laws, to keep a Society in it (p. 8). Now here it is plain, that there was something in the Gentiles as also in the Jews ... to keep both the Natural Affections and Royal Society (p. 9) . Notes and Documents91 So then they would by this means come to the Royal Law and to the Royal Society indeed, which is above all Societies that Nations, Peoples, Tongues and Languages have made, in all which there is Discord (p. 18, cf. pp. 24, 35, etc.) Three or four years before, in 1668, when Fox wrote the very similar Gospel-Liberty, and the Royal Law of Love, it evidently had not occurred to him to connect the scriptural "royal law of liberty" with the British Royal Society. He does not make invidious comparisons as Isaac Penington does that same year. Probably he knew less about the learned society's purpose. Slight though his knowledge may have been, it is additional evidence that the new Society penetrated to the consciousness of Friends. A QUAKER VOYAGE IN 1784 Edited by William Wistar Comfort A little band of Quakers set out from the Delaware on the Commerce, Captain Thomas Truxtun, on April 25, 1784. The bestknown account of their voyage to Gravesend is that of Rebecca Jones from which William J. Allinson published extended extracts in his Memorials of Rebecca Jones. Unfortunately the present whereabouts of her diary east-bound is not known, though the manuscript of her return voyage is in the Haverford College Library. There also, loaned by Mrs. Edward Wanton Smith of Germantown, is the manuscript account of the same east-bound voyage by another passenger, Sarah Hill Dillwyn, less celebrated than her famous and beloved husband George Dillwyn (1738-1820) , but belonging to a large family connection whose many descendants still survive. This Sarah Hill (1738/9-1826) who was married to George Dillwyn in 1759 never had any children of her own, but she had so many devoted sisters and nieces and nephews that she never suffered from lack of company and correspondents. The reader interested in further identifications than are necessary here is referred to Letters of Doctor Richard Hill and his Children collected and arranged by John Jay Smith (Philadelphia, 1854), Recollections of John Jay Smith (Philadelphia, 1892), and Memorials of Rebecca Jones by William J. Allinson (Philadelphia, n.d.). It seems that there was great activity among traveling ministers after the conclusion...