Quakers, Jews, and Freedom of Teaching in Barbados, 1686
- Quakers, Jews, and Freedom of Teaching in Barbados, 1686
Footnotes
1. Longworth stopped in Barbados on this journey. Three letters of his written there in February, 1687, are extant, though as yet unpublished.
2. In the Calendar of State Papers, Colonial (America and West Indies) the name John Beeke of Barbados occurs July 9, 1678, of a member of the assembly elected for the parish of St. Phillips; Sept. 7, 1681, of one of the witnesses ordered to attend the Council; Febr. 10, 1699, in connection with a bill for confirmation of grants of land to "John Beeke, gent." A Susannah Beeke is listed in 1680 among the inhabitants of St. Michael's Parish (J. C. Hotten, The Original Lists of Persons of Quality, etc., 1874, p. 447). The name Beeke appears on John Seller's map of 1686 as of a landowner in St. Phillips Parish.
3. The holidays mentioned are "the Day called Christmas-day" and "the 30th of January, so called." The same charge is mentioned against other Barbados Friends. As for the latter date it was evidently an important holiday in the West Indies though perhaps more political than religious. It was the anniversary of the execution of Charles I. Similar offences are referred to in other accounts of English nonconformists. In the newsbook for 1663/4 was an entry: "York. Jan. 30. This day puts the city in a melancholy dress, but some Phanaticks will needs open their shops and make it a day of common business" (cited in the Mather Papers, Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Fourth Series, vol. 8 (1868), p. 213).
4. He may be the schoolmaster mentioned in another lost letter of George Fox dated 8m. 24, 1676, which while addressed to Ralph Fretwell, Barbados, began: "Dear Ralph, to whom is my love, and to thy wife and family, and Jno. Rouse and his Father's family and to Tho. Foster and Rd. Foster, and Jno. Todd and the school master that went over. . . ." See Annual Catalogue, p. 139 (1676: 70F).
5. This letter, if extant, has not been identified.
6. Probably some members of the Wilkinson-Story party are alluded to.
7. The Rebellion of the Duke of Monmouth which ended at the Battle of Sedgemoor. For the difficulties of Friends, and their final success in clearing themselves from suspicion, see W. C. Braithwaite, The Second Period of Quakerism, 121 ff., and the sources there listed. One of these is endorsed "friends Clearness in the Duke of Monmouths Insurrection 1685."
8. Obscure references to difficulties of this sort in Barbados occur in other writings.
9. Close in time (about 1680) as well as in place (West Indies) are the references to children's meetings by Joan Vokins. At Antigua she says: "On the seventh day is their children's meetings. . . . They teach their children G. F.'s catechism" (God's Mighty Power Magnified, reprinted Cockermouth, 1871, p. 62 f.); and writing from Barbados to Rhode Island she says, "Here is at the West India Islands a very good precedent concerning children, and I could wish that it were so among the Lord's people everywhere. Friends children meet together once a week, and sit together with their parents, and wait upon the Lord, and are instructed, and they learn dear G. F.'s catechism at home, and then they say it at the meeting once a week, and I do believe that it produces a good effect" (ibid., p. 76). Children's meetings were mentioned by Fox at London Yearly Meeting in 1677, as is now shown by the full text of his testimony on that occasion in the Richardson MSS, referred to in Annual Catalogue, p. 151 (1677: 4, 84G). The youth's meetings familiar in Philadelphia in the eighteenth century were, I think, for somewhat older persons.
If separate teachers' meetings are intended by George Fox in his letter to John Beeke quoted at the beginning of this article, we find parallels for them from Ireland and from the next century, as for various other trade meetings of Friends. See R. Barclay, The Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the Commonwealth, p. 496...
