Journal of George Fox

THE JOURNAL OF GEORGE FOX Edited with an Introduction and Notes By Rufus M. Jones With an Essay on the Influence of the Journal by Henry J. Cadbury 1694 First Edition This already abridged from several volumes 1 Introductory Essay © 1963, by Henry J. Cadbury Capricorn Books Edition, 1963 2 CONTENTS The Influence of The Journal of George Fox Introduction The Testimony of William Penn Concerning that Faithful Servant, George Fox I. Boyhood—A Seeker, 1624-1648 II. The First Years of Ministry, 1648-1649 III. The Challenge and the First Taste of Prison, 1648-1649 IV. A Year in Derby Jail, 1650-1651 V. One Man May Shake the Country for Ten Miles, 1651-1652 VI. A New Era Begins, 1652 VII. In Prison Again, 1653 VIII. A Visit to Oliver Cromwell, 1653-1654 IX. A Visit to the Southern Counties, Which Ends in Launceston Jail, 1655-1656 X. Planting the Seed in Wales, 1656-1657 XI. In the Home of the Covenanters, 1657 3 XII. Great Events in London, 1658-1659 XIII. In the First Year of King Charles, 1660 XIV. Labors, Dangers and Sufferings, 1661-1662 XV. In Prison for Not Swearing, 1662-1665 XVI. A Year in Scarborough Castle, 1665-1666 XVII. At the Work of Organizing, 1667-1670 XVIII. Two Years in America, 1671-1673 XIX. The Last Imprisonment, 1673-1678 XX. [The Seed Reigns Over Death, 1679-1691] Index 4 The Influence of The Journal of George Fox Henry J. Cadbury [That the Journal of George Fox is a religious classic would be admitted by many persons who have no special reason to praise it, or no substantial acquaintance with it. As religious autobiography of an Englishman, it has been considered in the same class as Wesley’s Journal and Newman’s Apologia pro Vita Sua, and according to at least one historian’s judgment, Fox’s contribution is the most original of the three. The first edition of Fox’s Journal contained testimonies and memorials of him, including one by Thomas Ellwood, the editor, one by Fox’s widow and, most valuable of all, one by] William Penn.1 [Modern editors of the Journal have retained these testimonies, but have usually compiled their own appreciations of Fox’s character and significance. For the present edition it has seemed suitable to attempt instead something that has perhaps never been undertaken before, namely a review of the traceable historical, religious and literary influence of this ancient autobiography. The influence of the Journal can be studied at all only with difficulty, and in isolation from other factors. The first prefaces to which I have just alluded were written by persons that had known Fox directly: Margaret Fell since 1652, Thomas Ellwood since (he says) 1660, and William Penn, as we now know, since at least 1669 and, as he says, “not only by report of others, but from my own long and most inward converse and intimate knowledge of him.” Indeed there is little evidence that any of these writers, except Thomas Ellwood, had read the Journal to which their testimony was prefixed. To them, and to the whole of that generation, the living and remembered Fox, “dear George,” as they called him, had been communicated directly and not by a written medium. As this sharp, personal impression faded, there remained two less immediate forces operating to keep the memory of Fox green: the Journal and his other works published or republished (the 1 This last, under the title “A Brief Account of the Rise and Progress of the People Called Quakers,” has merited and received independent publication. [All the more surprising is it to learn that one of Fox’s heirs, William Meade, succeeded in having Penn’s piece excluded from many of the first bound copies of the volume. Meade’s motives were probably political criticism of Penn.] 5 two folio volumes of epistles and doctrinal writings, for example, issued respectively in 1698 and 1704), and the Society of Friends which Fox had founded. Emerson has said that an institution is the lengthened shadow of one man “…as Quakerism of George Fox,” but how were men like Emerson and others outside the Society of Friends (or even inside it) to differentiate between the unwritten legacy of Fox and the man himself, at least that portrait of himself painted by Fox in the Journal? Is it not possible for the institution to overshadow the one man that it derives from? The influence of Fox’s Journal even within Quakerism is very difficult to estimate. That it was from the first widely circulated we know. Fox had left instructions that it be printed at the expense of his estate and free copies sent to every organized community of Friends in the world. (The book, I may add, eventually weighed four and a half pounds). In many meetings are preserved minutes noting the receipt of these books promptly in 1694. Each copy was to be made available for members of the meeting to borrow in turn. In some meetings the copy was chained in the house. When in August the central meeting in London received word of possible exaggeration in one passage they printed a substitute leaf to insert in all undistributed copies, and they tried to insert it in distributed copies, particularly those in the university libraries at Oxford and Cambridge. To judge from dozens of copies I have seen, they succeeded more often than they failed. The editio princes of 1694 was followed by many other editions. The Journal was not translated as early or as completely into continental languages as other Quaker books. But for two centuries the society kept the work—the whole work—in print, both in England and in America. Even so, the influence of the book on Quakers is more easily inferred than proved. Actual references to its being read are sparse. Of course, Fox’s Journal was not the first autobiography of a Friend. Many records of Friends who predeceased him had been printed, some of them at his instigation, and with contributions written by him. Fox’s Journal is much longer than any of these, however, for many of them are much more like religious confessions than extended autobiographies. The Journal has a more detailed account of Fox’s years of service, for example, than it is customary to find in these other works. 6 For the influence of Fox’s Journal one would have to look at Quaker autobiographies written later. Many of those of his contemporaries bear some resemblance to Fox’s book, but the resemblance is due either to coincidence or to the influence of the central publishing authorities of Friends. After Fox’s death it became evident that other Journals of Friends would be published; the authors of these in that expectation would standardize their manuscripts as they prepared them to be left with their heirs. More detailed or exact imitation of Fox’s Journal is far to seek in these Journals, though they have received a good deal of attention from modern scholars. The earliest and most vocal reaction to the publication of Fox’s Journal came, as might be expected, not from the Friends themselves nor from the authorities in church and state who since 1688 had adjusted to tolerate Quakerism, but from the renegade Quakers and other individuals critical of the Society of Friends; few other persons than these entertained any personal dislike of Fox. One of these critics of longest standing was Francis Bugg. From 1680 when he became disaffected to Quakerism to his death more than forty years later he poured out a stream of attacks—over sixty publications in all. Beginning with the very year the Journal was published it was the object of sundry and repeated criticism.2 He was suspicious of the printed Journal partly because of its excellence of style. Bugg knew that Fox’s original style was not polished, just as his handwriting was crude. (He and his fellow critics published literatim some of Fox’s holograph letters and a testamentary memorandum which they called his “will”; presumably they saw the original of the latter in the Prerogative office, though even that copy is less uncultivated than the text that they circulated.)] But Bugg was fully justified in suspecting that the Journal as printed had been edited and corrected; it was common knowledge that thirteen Friends had been entrusted with the task. [Referring to this editorial committee Bugg wrote: You see what persons G. Fox reposed his trust in to print his books, papers and manuscripts. I know some of them well, and I suppose the rest are like them or else they left the work to them, for there is not one book of Fox’s that I can find that was printed as it was writ, nor do I think there is four lines of G. Fox’s manuscript called his Journal printed as wrote by him.] 2 A marked copy owned by Bugg is still extant in Trinity College Library, Cambridge. 7 We now know that very few lines of Fox’s Journal were written by him at all; most were dictated to others. We know that Thomas Ellwood and the rest of the editorial committee did smooth the written text; that was to be expected, but it hardly justifies Bugg’s complaint. [The Journal was a better edited book than he wanted to see, and by the standards of the time the editing process was quite justified. When Bugg found fault with other features of the Journal he was quite willing to blame them on Fox himself.

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