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A Historical Questionnaire by William Penn
- Bulletin of Friends' Historical Association
- Friends Historical Association
- Volume 33, Number 2, Autumn 1944
- pp. 67-72
- 10.1353/qkh.1944.a395472
- Article
- Additional Information
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A HISTORICAL QUESTIONNAIRE67 A HISTORICAL QUESTIONNAIRE BY WILLIAM PENN By Henry J. Cadbury THE questionnaire here printed, I believe for the first time, evidently belongs to that early and persistent concern of Friends to secure a record of the significant facts of their history. The resulting documents, as presented in 1904 to 1907 by Norman Penney in The First Publishers of Truth together with others later identified and published by the same editor or by the present writer in the Journal of Friends Historical Society in 1908, 1916, 1926, 1928, 1929, 1934, 1935, and 1939, are not complete, but they bear witness both to the success and to the failure of Friends in attempting to recover in various parts of England and Wales their local history. What individuals were most responsible for instituting this inquiry we do not know. George Fox had himself a great interest in preserving materials for history. The letters of Friends from near the beginning of the movement were kept by him and Margaret Fell at Swarthmore Hall and were definitely preserved to supply historical data for the future. Questionnaires were early circulated. The sufferings of Friends were to be regularly reported to London, where Ellis Hookes began collecting them as early as 1660. Fox's lost Book of Miracles was a compilation of rather more autobiographical character, but his lost Book of Examples, relating God's judgments on persecutors, was a compilation in more than one sense the opposite of the Book of Miracles. The annual queries, one of which asked explicitly about such judgments, became a routine method of obtaining historical data on certain lines. Another collection was "The Lives of Friends in the Ministry." The central bodies of Friends diligently sought information about deceased ministers, and the preparation of memorials about them by local meetings became finally almost a regular biographical habit. This material found printed expression in the successive volumes of Piety Promoted. The various inquiries about the first publishing of truth were therefore parallel to these other processes of collecting historical records. Indeed, the responses sometimes overlap. In Vol. 33, Autumn 1944 68 BULLETIN OF FRIENDS HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION the collections which should be answers on the first publishing of truth we find imbedded sometimes the annual queries themselves,1 sometimes biographies of deceased ministers,2 and often whole sections that would seem to be more suitable for the collection of Friends' sufferings.3 As already suggested, the furtherance of such inquiries was largely the task of the central meetings in London. It was therefore impersonal, though much of the labor of sending out the questions and receiving the replies must have fallen upon the successive scriveners employed by Friends as secretaries in their headquarters. One of the questionnaires giving "directions to collect matters for a general history of the entrance and progress of truth in this age, by way of annals" was printed and a copy of it has been endorsed "By C. Meidel." 4 The interest of the document here published is that it too has an endorsement in the hand of William Penn : writt by W. P. signed by many Brethren It is derived from a MS volume of copies of sundry papers of William Penn now in The Historical Society of Pennsylvania and formerly in the papers owned by Granville Penn. Penn himself had seen the volume and supplied a few endorsements like that mentioned, and the following heading: A Book of Letters and some other Papers given forth at several times as required of the Lord and otherwise in zeal and a good understanding of them, whether to Friends, rulers, people or any particular persons, by me William Penn from the 7th month in the year 1667 The book has had various vicissitudes, pages 1-42 and pages 43-180 being once separately owned and sold. Evidently other pages once followed page 180. The volume is rebound under the title "William Penn's Letter Book 1667-1675." The piece in question occurs on pages 104-06. 1 /. F. H. S., vol. XXXI, p. 5 (Chipping meeting) . s F. P. T, p. 2 (1682), or pp. 147-51. 3 F. P. T., pp. 169-93. 4 F. P...