No More Quaker Heroes - or Villains

  A Book of Quaker Saints by Lucy V. Hodgkin

 

 illustrated by F. Cayley-Robinson

A Yearly Meeting preparation session on 'Uncomfortable Quaker Histories' which I attended on Zoom yesterday allowed me to revisit work I have done myself on challenging Quaker myths and legends and got me thinking about how to take this forward.

We were presented with stories of Quakers in Lancaster and in America (including William Penn) who had been profitably engaged in the Atlantic slave trade and who had not always been challenged effectively by their contemporaries. We were also reminded of the ambivalent attitude of some Friends in the past to the poor - only to be helped if they were suitably grateful and knew 'their place' and never wholly accepted as equals. In this context we were asked if a testimony to equality had ever existed.

Back in the 1980s I gave a series of talks on Quaker Myths and Legends, questioning assumptions that were taken for granted at the time such as equality between men and women and how the peace testimony came about. In 1986 I was part of the group who wrote and presented the Quaker Womens Group Swarthmore lecture 'Bringing the Invisible into the Light'. As well as questioning whether equality had always been an integral part of the Society of Friends, the lecture included examples of painful personal experience such as domestic violence among Friends. The lecture was welcomed by many but also provoked very strong negative reactions - disbelief that Quakers could act in this way and denial that Friends were not always perfect in their relations with others. A lot of the discomfort stemmed from our audacity in challenging some Friends' established world view.

We are now looking at our past again through the lens of sexism, racism and classism and what we are finding is uncomfortable. I would say that this is what an honest study of the past should be. There never were Quaker Saints. Quakers have always been humans with human imperfections, shaped by the wider society they found themselves in but also by changes in the practices and attitudes of the Society of Friends through the centuries. I think it is better and more helpful to identify with past Quakers who were not perfect than to put heroes and heroines on a pedestal from which they may come crashing down. We may feel shame at the actions of Friends in the past and seek in some way to make amends but I believe that we should also try to reach for understanding, to learn where we are going wrong now and how we may change and improve.

We may remove the name of William Penn from a room in Friends House but I hope we can continue to give him his due and not reject him totally as a Quaker villain. We should not reject his writings because of some aspects of his life because his words are still valuable. When my meeting was reading through Quaker Faith and Practice several years ago as part of the revision process I was surprised to find that the extracts Friends found most helpful were not the most modern writings but those by William Penn and Isaac Penington. 

We need meticulous research, such as we were presented with in the preparation session, looking in detail at Quaker links to slavery, attitudes to the poor and other marginalised groups. The more we learn the more we can understand rather than only condemn. Local studies are a good start but these themes also need to be seen in a wider context - for example the way in which womens' meetings evolved, their purpose and their influence.

I have tried in my biographical posts on this blog to include a broad range of past Quakers, including women of course but also lower class Quakers without much money. There are also 'difficult' Friends and those with mental health problems. Just a few examples are Ruth Follows, Thomas Shillitoe, Benjamin Lay and his wife Sarah, Josiah Langdale and Rebecca Jones. James Jenkins was trying to write honest rather than idealised testimonies to Friends he had known in the 18th century, There is much more work to be done to bring invisible poor Quakers, Quaker servants and Quaker people of colour into the light, but a start has been made.

If there is one lesson we can learn from the past it is that there should be no more Quaker Saints. We must do away with Quaker heroes but I hope we will not go to the other extreme and cast Friends as villains. Idealising the past makes us unable to face reality but so does seeing it only in black and white rather than in Quaker gray.
.

Quaker Alphabet Blog 2015 - L for Josiah Langdale

Josiah Langdale was born in 1673 at Nafferton in Yorkshire and baptised into the Church of England in August of that year. In 1681 Josiah's father died and, as the eldest and possibly only son, Josiah had to give up his full time education in order to support his family.

He went to work on a farm, caring for livestock and learning how to plough, work which was obviously congenial to his nature. He was proud of his skill and found the solitary nature of the work conducive to religious contemplation. This contemplation was usually about the state of his own soul. In the spiritual autobiograhy which Josiah wrote later in life he confesses his failings and temptations, among them the troubling feelings aroused in him by a violent game of football and by his enjoyment of dancing. He longed to be a better person but found that outward ceremonies, such as confirmation by the bishop and receiving the Lord's Supper, did not have the immediate, amost magical, transforming effect he hoped for.

The second great change in Josiah's life happened in 1688 when he was fifteen and his mother, after seven years as a widow, decided to marry again. She would no longer be dependent on her son and Josiah felt that it was time to leave home. He hired himself out to a farmer as a ploughman, probably at one of the hiring fairs which were held each year throughout the country at this time. Martinmas, November 11th, was the usual date in the north when master and man would mutually agree on a verbal contract which bound them for a year.

Nafferton Church

Josiah was happy with his first master but when the year ended could not agree on wages so decided to hire himself instead to a Quaker, David Milner, who, with his wife Sarah and their family lived at Carnaby, a village a few miles from Nafferton. Josiah's family and his local priest were very worried that these Quakers might influence or even bewitch him into becoming one of them, but as it turned out the greatest influence on him initially was not Quakerism but another servant of the Milners. Thomas Hewson, a blind thresher about fifteen years older than Josiah, was a self-educated man who had thought deeply about religion but had retained his independence. In him Josiah found an intimate friend and confidant with whom he could explore all his doubts and fears about what was the right way in religion.

It was mainly in order to stay with his friend that Josiah hired himself to David Milner for another year in 1690. When he went home for a visit during the winter of 1690-91 Josiah's relations teased him that he seemed so serious that he was in danger of turning Quaker, but Josiah was only made uncomfortable by such remarks and hurried back to his friend Thomas.

In fact the Milners had been extremely careful not to exert any influence on Josiah or indeed to talk to him about religion at all. Only when Sarah Milner's brother, Timothy Towse, an impetuous young man of twenty five, came for a visit in 1691 and urged Josiah to go to a meeting to hear the well known travelling minister James Dickinson was any pressure put on him. The whole episode was altogether counter-productive too as even though his friend Thomas Hewson went with him and approved of James Dickinson, Josiah was so anxious about the effect the Quaker might have on him that he could derive no benefit from it.

Map showing Nafferton, Carnaby and Bridlington

Josiah went on with his spiritual searching, quietly observing and approving the behaviour of the Quakers he
encountered at the fairs and markets he attended as his master's foreman, but it was not until two years later, in May 1693 when he was nineteen, that the greatest change in his life came about. One Sunday David Milner had gone into Bridlington early and later in the day Josiah's mistress Sarah asked him if he would escort her into town and come with her to meeting if he felt he could. This time he was content to go and after sitting in silence for several hours he was moved to tears. He was not derided, as he had been a few years before when the same thing had happened during a church service, but accepted. He knew that he had found what he had been seeking - the people of God with whom he could join.

In a closeknit rural society the change in Josiah did not remain a secret. His mother was told of it and came at once to see for herself. When he met her Josiah felt that he had to be true to his new profession and act on the testimony to plain speech which would mark him out as a Quaker. He therefore addressed her as 'thou', without any of the respectful forms which she would have expected from her son. She was offended and went home, but six weeks later Josiah felt that he should visit his family to try to heal the breach. This time he was better received by his mother and step-father and also by his uncle and aunts. Josiah might have changed his behaviour but they accepted that he was their Josiah still.

Bridlington harbour

When Josiah reached the age of twenty in 1693 the land left to him by his father came into his possession. He was able to be more independent and although still earning his keep as a ploughman could give more of his time to Quaker work. When Josiah became a member of Bridlington meeting (then called Burlington and Keys) it was in the middle of a revival, particularly among the young people. Another Bridlington Quaker, John Richardson, said of it 'Friends grew so in the ministry that it became a proverb that Bridlington was become a school of prophets'. Josiah grew close to other young men such as Timothy Towse, of whom he had initially been so wary, and Thomas Thompson, with whom he later travelled in the ministry.

Josiah felt called to the ministry within a year of his convincment and felt that one day he might be called to visit America. Eventually in 1700, when he was twenty-seven, he fufilled this calling, travelling mainly with Thomas Thompson and remaining abroad for nearly five years. The two young men gave a report of their journey to Yearly Meeting in London in 1705.

About five years later Josiah married Margaret Burton when he was 37 and she was 26. They lived in Bridlington and were both active as ministers, travelling independently when called to do so. In 1715 Josiah travelled to America again with Thomas Thompson. This was a much shorter visit than the first and the pair were sent off by Friends meeting in Philadelphia in June 1716 to return homr by way of the West Indies, which they did in a leisurely fashion, not arriving back until later in the year. While Joseph was away Margaret Langdale had undertaken a religious visit on her own account to Ireland and continued her travels after his return, visiting Europe in 1717 and Wales in 1718.

Josiah, meanwhile, was feeling more and more drawn to move permanently to America. He went again in 1720 and stayed for a year mainly in Philadelphia where he is reported as diligently attending religious meetings. This time though he had not come primarily as a minister and spent most of his time buying land and making arrangements to move his family and himself to the New World. Early in 1723 Josiah, Margaret and their two surviving children, Mary aged ten and John aged eight, set sail for America on the ship London Hope but during the voyage Josiah died at the age of 49.

Margaret had no choice but to contiue on the course they had set themselves. She and her children were welcomed by Philadelphia Friends and she at once embarked on her work as a minister but she could not continue to rely on the charity of Friends so resolved her problems by marrying again. After the accepted mourning period of a year and a day Margaret married Samuel Preston, a useful citizen of Philadelphia and a valuable Friend twenty years her senior. Thomas Chalkley, one of Josiah's old travelling companions was present and reported that  'The meeting was large, and the parable of the virgins and the bridegroom's coming at midnight, was opened'.

In the years that followed Margaret was much occupied as a travelling minister until she died in 1742 aged 58. Her son and daughter both married and settled in America and there are Langdale descendants living there to this day.