A Newly Discovered Letter of George Fox

Notes and Documents A NEWLY DISCOVERED LETTER OF GEORGE FOX Edited by Henry J. Cadbury IN FEBRUARY 1947 the Haverford College Quaker Collection acquired from The Rosenbach Company of Philadelphia three early Quaker letters whose prior history was unknown. One of these letters was written by Margaret Fell and another by William Smith, and these two will be published in the Journal of Friends' Historical Society (London). The third letter was by George Fox and is printed below. It was addressed to Pieter Hendricks and Jan Claus, well-known Friends of Amsterdam, and was duly listed by Mark Swanner in the Annual Catalogue of George Fox's Papers (edited by Henry J. Cadbury, Philadelphia, 1939, see item 15, 23G, p. 174) . The copy of this letter acquired by Haverford is in Mark Swanner's hand, but it has no address or other mark of having been the copy actually sent to Holland. Nor has it the endorsement usual with the copies of Fox's papers that were used for compiling the Annual Catalogue. Though Fox almost never wrote out his last name, the handwriting of the endorsement may be compared with that reproduced, as perhaps his own, in Journal ofFriends' Historical Society, I (1903), 10. The date of writing, 8-lst Mo., 1682/83 — March 8, 1683 in present parlance — is three days earlier than the first entry in Fox's Itinerary Journal for that year (The Short Journal and Itinerary Journals of George Fox, Philadelphia, 1925, p. 77). According to the Annual Catalogue (15, 22G, p. 174), Fox wrote on the same date to William Penn and others in Pennsylvania . By the same evidence (15, 45G, p. 174 and 54G, p. 181) one may conjecture that the paper on marriages was a paper on hasty marriages in which Fox began with a quotation from The Mirrour for Justices. Not only the quotation but the full text of Fox's paper can be found, the latter on page 131, in the Book of Cases, Vol. I, 1661-1695, a folio manuscript volume of the London Meeting for Sufferings. According to the Annual Catalogue various other letters on marriage were sent to 29 30Bulletin of Friends Historical Association Holland in 1683. Others are extant in the Colchester MSS 1, 10, 83, 94, 103 (see C. Fell-Smith, Steven Crisp and His Correspondents, 1657-1692, London, 1892.) A letter of Fox To all Rulers and Magistrates, written a fortnight before the date of his letter, was printed in English. Fox's Epistle to the Household of the Seed of Abraham was printed in English in 1682 (included as No. 382 in the collected Epistles, 1698) and in Dutch in 1684. These may or may not be the items intended. The central subject of the letter is the establishment of meetings for business where there were groups of Friends on the continent. Scarcely any other evidence is forthcoming (yet see below) of a Monthly Meeting at Hamburg or of a Yearly Meeting at Danzig, still less of the meetings proposed by Fox at Friedrichstadt and in the Palatinate. They are not mentioned in W. Hubben, Die Quaker in der deutschen Vergangenheit (Leipzig, 1929). This organizing interest is characteristic of Fox in this period and so are various of the religious phrases elsewhere in this letter. The information that Friends in Barbados were kept out of their meetinghouses by the authorities in 1682, I have not met with elsewhere, nor do I know other correspondence with Holland that would explain the reference to books that Fox expected from Holland. For Roger Longworth, we now have an extended biography in W. I. Hull, William Penn and the Dutch Quaker Migration to Pennsylvania (Swarthmore, Pa., 1935), pp. 345380 . It mentions Longworth's recent activity in organizing a yearly meeting in Danzig and half-yearly meetings at Friedrichstadt and Hamburg (p. 362). Three days after Fox wrote of him in London in this letter, Longworth was committed to the Common Gaol of Surrey County (p. 363 f.). London, 8 - 1st. Mo. 82/3 Dear Peter H. & J. C. With my Love to you & your wives, & all the rest of ffriends, both in Holland & Germany & elsewhere. I reed thy letter dated ye...