The History of the Christian People Called Quakers

The Eleventh Book. 1689-1702

1689.

I proceed now to the year 1689, in the beginning of which the peers of the realm, &c. offered the administration of the government to the prince of Orange, which he accepted of. Not long after he called a convention of the commons; for a parliament it could not be named, since in England none but a king has power to call a parliament. In the meanwhile the prince had caused the princess his consort, to come over from Holland, into England; and at length the convention, after many great debates, came to this resolution, that the throne was vacant; the consequence of which was, that the prince and princess of Orange were declared by the names of William the third, and Mary the second, king and queen of England, &c. and according were afterwards crowned. A large relation thereof is to be found in several books. By the way I will only say, that the coronation was performed by the bishop of London, the archbishop of Canterbury having refused to act in that solemnity; at the performance of which the king and queen were asked by the bishop, ‘Will you solemnly promise and swear to govern the people of this kingdom of England, and the dominions thereto belonging, according to the statutes in parliament agreed to, and the laws and customs of the same?’ To which the king and queen having answered, ‘I solemnly promise so to do;’ the bishop asked, ‘Will you to your power cause law in justice and mercy to be executed in all your judgments?’ Answer was made, ‘I will.’ The next question was, ‘Will you to the utmost of your power maintain the law of God, the true profession of the gospel, and the Protestant Reformed religion established by law? And will you preserve unto the bishops and clergy of this realm, and to the churches committed to their charge, all such rights and privileges as by law do or shall appertain to them, or any of them?’ To which the king and queen answered, ‘All this I promise to do.’ After this they laying each of them their hands upon the book of the gospel, said, ‘These things which I have here before promised, I will perform and keep. So help me God.’ Under these punctual and nice questions was more hidden than some would think. For the king having answered so as hath been said, could not now free any from paying tithes to the clergy, without violation of his oath.

Not long after William and Mary were thus made king and queen of England, they were also in Scotland declared king and queen of Scotland. And somebody in Holland denoted the year of his being made king in this manner: ‘VVILheLMVs tertIVs angLIæ VInDeX.’ Not long after this a war was proclaimed against France, and the late king, James, supported by the French king, went over to Ireland, from whence in process of time he was driven away by king William, after the bloody battle near the river Boyne; but that not belonging to this history, I will not detain my reader with a relation thereof.

A king having now mounted the throne, the convention was turned into a parliament; and then this august assembly made it their business to restrain the forcing of conscience; and an act passed for exempting Protestant dissenters from the penal laws, by which some dissenters, and especially the Quakers, had suffered and been persecuted many years. Yet care was taken to keep that law in force by which Papists were excluded from sitting in parliament. And those penal laws, of which mention hath been made heretofore in due place, were now restrained, except the test act, properly required for serving in high offices, and to keep out the Papists. The aforesaid act gave also liberty to dissenters to keep religious meetings, provided the doors were not locked, barred or bolted, during the time of such meeting. But none of these dissenters were freed from paying tithes, or other church duties, so called, to the clergy, nor from being cited before bishops’ courts. But this liberty of keeping public meetings was not allowed to Papists; for all that would participate of the said liberty, were required to take the oath of allegiance; yet to comply with the people called Quakers, who for conscience-sake scrupled to take any oath, this act enjoined that they should subscribe the following declaration:

‘I A. B. do sincerely promise and solemnly declare, before God and the world, that I will be true and faithful to king William and queen Mary; and I do solemnly profess and declare, that I do from my heart abhor, detest and renounce, as impious and heretical, that damnable doctrine and position, that princes excommunicated or deprived by the pope, or any authority of the see of Rome, may be deposed or murdered by their subjects, or any other whatsoever. And I declare that no foreign prince, person, prelate, state, or potentate, hath, or ought to have any power, jurisdiction, superiority, pre-eminence, or authority, ecclesiastical or spiritual, within this realm.’

Besides this they were obliged to subscribe also another, with respect to their orthodoxy, and for excluding Socinianism.

‘I A. B. profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ his eternal Son, the true God, and in the holy Spirit, one God, blessed for evermore: and do acknowledge the holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration.’

And lest any Papist might make use of this declaration, there were required sufficient Protestant witnesses that the declarer was a Protestant dissenter. Besides no congregation or assembly for religious worship was permitted or allowed by this act, until the place of such meeting should be certified to the bishop of the diocese, or to the archdeacon of the archdeaconry; or to the justices of the peace at the general or quarter-sessions of the peace for the county, city, or place, in which such meeting should be held, and registered in the said bishop’s or archdeacon’s court respectively, or recorded at the said general or quarter-sessions: for which the register or clerk should not take greater fee or reward than sixpence.

By this we now see the religion of the Quakers acknowledged and tolerated by an act of parliament; and themselves released from all persecution for performance of their public worship, and their refusal of the oath of allegiance. This was a work reserved for that great prince king William, who being born in a country where force upon conscience was abrogated, when a Protestant government was settled there, now also according to his ability introduced the like Christian liberty in England: but to release from the payment of tithes was beyond his reach, how unreasonably soever the clergy acted in this case; whereof about this time a notable instance was published in print, of one John Bishop, a countryman at Wortham, from whom for two years tithes there had been taken, horses, kine, and sheep, to the value of about seventy-six pounds, according to the estimate of impartial persons, though rated by himself at eighty-three pounds. And yet the priest, Thomas Thurlow, had declared upon his oath, that he believed that the tithes of every year’s growth of the said Bishop, did amount one year with another, to three pounds seventeen shillings and sixpence; but the charges were reckoned so high, and the rating of the distrained goods was so very much beneath the real value, that the loss thereby sustained was exceeding great.

In Barbadoes, in the West Indies, where the inhabitants were marshalled to bear arms, the Quakers, notwithstanding what had been ordered in their favour by king James, continued yet under hard sufferings, of which more in the sequel. They now that were thus oppressed, sent over a petition to the king, wherein they set forth how they were molested, and prayed for relief; which had such effect, that the king issued forth the following order:

‘At the Council at Whitehall, Dec. 12, 1689.

‘Present the king’s most excellent majesty in council.

‘Upon reading a petition of the people called Quakers, inhabiting the island of Barbadoes, setting forth, that because the said Quakers could not bear arms, nor take an oath in any case, they have suffered much by virtue of an act made to settle the militia in the said island; as in the petition hereunto annexed, is more at large expressed; his majesty in council is graciously pleased to refer the matter of the said petition to the examination of James Kendal, esq. his majesty’s governor of Barbadoes for the time being, who is to give the petitioners such relief in relation to the militia, as to him shall seem just and reasonable to answer their particular circumstances, and to make report thereof to his majesty.

RICHARD COLLINGE.’