Quaker Alphabet Blog Week 35 - R for Martha Winter Routh

Silhouette of Martha Routh

Martha Winter was born in 1743, the youngest of the numerous children of Henry and Jane Winter of Stourbridge, Worcestershire. She was carefully educated at home but was troubled about her religious state from an early age. Although convinced of the truths of Quakerism she found it difficult to stand by those testimonies that marked her out, in speech and dress, as different from the friends she made in the day school she attended who were not Quakers.

Around this time two Quaker travelling ministers came to visit families in her area. They reminded the children that they should not deviate from their parents' principles when their parents were not there and Martha resolved to change her behaviour and use plain speech with everyone. She wrote to  one of her best friends at school hoping that she would not be offended by the fact 'that I could not any longer give her the title of Miss, but must call her by her proper name, as well as the other girls, though I should love them no less but rather better, because I knew it was acting contrary to the mind of my parents, and the way in which friends spoke to one another.' Her schoolmates made no comment on Martha's change and treated her just the same, which greatly relieved her mind. 

Catherine Payton Phillips

From the age of fourteen Martha felt a calling to the Quaker ministry but she resisted it for many years, although some Friends were aware of her struggle. Catherine Payton Phillips, who lived locally, took a great interest in Martha and when she was seventeen recommended her for the post of assistant to Anna Coulson who had a boarding school for Friends' children in Nottingham. Eventually Martha and one of her sisters took over the running of this school.

After her father's death when she was 26 Martha's struggles with her call to the ministry affected her health and eventually became evident to all around her, although she could not confide in anyone. It was only when she was apparently at death's door that she talked to her sister and was gradually enabled to take up the burden of ministry when she was 29 years old. She began to travel in the ministry in 1775 when she accompanied Ruth Follows on a tour of the northern counties and Scotland. Martha gained much from her association with older and more experienced women Friends and in later years was glad to pass her own experience on to younger women.

In 1776 Martha married Richard Routh and the couple moved to Manchester. Richard was also a minister and the couple travelled extensively both together and separately. They had no children of their own but adopted one of Martha's nephews as a son. Unfortunately he was killed in a bathing accident while Martha and Richard were attending the Monthly Meeting at Warrington. At the time Martha told her husband, her aunt and another Friend that she knew inwardly that he was drowned, a premonition that was proved right on their return home.

Between 1794 and 1797 and from 1801 to 1805 Martha, sometimes with her husband and sometimes with a succession of female companions, was in America. In 1804 Martha came with her husband to New Bedford, Mass. with the intention of making their home there, but he died while travelling later that year in New York and she returned to England alone. Her health declined but she continued to travel and to attend the Yearly Meeting each year. In 1817 she was in London for this purpose when she was taken ill and died aged 74. She was buried in Bunhill Fields burial ground.

A Beaver Hat worn over a cap

Her experience when young led Martha Routh to adopt more moderate views than some of her contemporaries, She agreed with William Savery that in matters of dress 'no standard could be fixed, that countries differed in some small matters, but that plainness was still plainness in all places and wished Friends to keep to the true simplicity without formality.' In one matter of dress Martha even set a fashion as she is credited with the introduction of the 'plain bonnet' among American women Friends, who had until then worn beaver hats over their caps.

Quaker Alphabet Blog Week 25 - M for Meeting Houses

Come-to-Good in Cornwall with stable at side

Meeting for worship does not require a meeting house but the buildings in which Quakers gather together do reflect something of what Quaker community means and has meant over the centuries.

In Britain Yearly Meeting one of the most striking things about Quaker meeting houses is their variety. Some meetings do not have their own building but gather instead in members' houses or in hired rooms. This may be a decision reached because of lack of numbers, local circumstances or as a witness to simplicity. After all, when Quakerism began this was the way in which local meetings started out.

Manchester Mount Street

The earliest meeting houses, from the 17th and early 18th centuries,

Slough - a modern meeting house

look like houses of the period, even if they were in fact purpose-built. A little later they may take on more of the appearance of a chapel and in the expansiveness of the 19th century sometimes become quite grand. There have been relatively few purpose-built meeting houses in the 20th century but there are some notable exceptions. In modern times Friends have often adapted buildings erected for other purposes - as a house, a shop or even a masonic hall!

Wimbledon - once a house

Barnstaple - once a shop

The new meeting house in Newcastle - once a Masonic hall!

Wallingford 'stand'

Inside these different buildings there will be a meeting room and the way in which this is set out also says something about Quakers both past and present.

Slough meeting room

From the 17th to the beginning of the 20th century a meeting room had a 'stand' at one end where the ministers and, sometimes in lower seats, the elders and overseers sat. They faced the rest of the meeting who were sitting in rows of benches with men on one side and women on the other. In modern times these distinctions melted away and chairs and benches are now usually arranged in a circle with only a table, often containing flowers and perhaps copies of Quaker Faith and Practice and the Bible, as a focus. In modern meeting houses this modern practice is quite natural but in older rooms it can feel as though one is 'camping out' in the middle of somewhere originally arranged quite differently. Certainly in Reading the circular arrangement makes the acoustic quite difficult although I have found that a speaker can be heard quite clearly from the redundant ministers' 'stand'!

Reading meeting room - camping out!

Skipton meeting room

I have just moved from a large 19th century meeting house and a large meeting in Reading to a smaller 17th century meeting house and a small to medium size meeting in Skipton. The architecture of both can be inspiring in different ways but in the end for me the power of meeting for worship comes from a community of people gathering together and that can happen wherever I am.
 
If you want to get a fuller impression of the variety of meeting houses in the British Isles may I recommend John Hall's photostream of Quaker Meeting Houses on Flickr from which all the illustrations for this post are taken.

Quaker Alphabet Blog Week 18 - I for Isaac Crewdson

Kendal Quaker Meeting House

Isaac Crewdson was born in Kendal in 1780, the fourth child in a family of seven sons and two daughters. His parents, Thomas Crewdson and Cicely Dillworth were both from established Quaker families and Isaac was brought up strictly according to traditional Quaker ways and doctrines.

Isaac Crewdson

Isaac went into the prosperous family cotton business and in 1803 married Elizabeth Jowitt of Leeds and settled at Ardwick, Manchester. They had two children, a son who died in infancy and a daughter Margaret. Isaac was a prominent member of Hardshaw East Monthly Meeting and was recorded as a minister by them. Isaac was therefore at the centre of a close family and Quaker network where he might have remained, prosperous and comfortable, had it not been for troubling influences coming from America and from his own convictions.

Elias Hicks

A controversy had arisen among American Quakers between traditional 'Quietist' Friends who stressed the primacy of the Inward Light and Evangelical Friends who gave more weight to the authority of the Bible and to justification by faith in Christ. One party of traditional Friends were led by Elias Hicks of New York and in  time came to be known as Hicksites, while the other party were called Orthodox Friends. In America there were serious divisions and splits between the parties.

Isaac became convinced that the evangelical position was right and he was not alone in this. However his views gradually became more extreme. Joseph John Gurney, an influential Evangelical, says that around 1832 he remembered 'telling my friend Isaac Crewdson...that he and I had started our race from opposite points, had met, and crossed on the road.'

In 1835 Isaac published a pamphlet, A Beacon to the Society of Friends. This book was a systematic refutation of writings by Elias Hicks, couched in extreme terms which only served to polarise positions. In Isaac's view scriptural authority and authority derived from the Inward Light could not co-exist and he characterised the latter, upon which most of early Quakerism was based, as 'a delusive notion'.

Manchester Mount Street meeting house

The Beacon pamphlet precipitated serious disagreement and conflict among Friends. Even some of those who took an evangelical position themselves felt, like J.J. Gurney, that Crewdson was going too far and they tried to silence him rather than answer his published arguments. Some even burned his pamphlet rather than read it themselves or allow others to see it. In Manchester many Friends were reduced to tears by the debate and quite a few saw Isaac's treatment as persecution, even if they did not agree with him. Lancashire Quarterly Meeting did not know how to proceed so they appealed to Yearly Meeting. It appointed a committee to restore unity, a difficult task which they failed to accomplish. The committee, which contained several noted evangelicals including Joseph John Gurney, would not condemn Crewdson's doctrine but counselled him for 'practical' reasons first to withdraw his pamphlet and then to suspend his ministry - both of which he refused to do.

The next step was inevitable. In Manchester in1836 Isaac Crewdson and his wife, along with some fifty others, many of them members of his family, resigned from the Society of Friends. Families were painfully divided by the controversy and people were forced to take sides. There were other resignations, amounting to around 400 in all, in meetings throughout the country which included about 100 Friends in Kendal (one third of the meeting).

Isaac Crewdson in 1840

As part of their move away from traditional Quakerism many Beaconites felt that scripture required them to undergo water-baptism. Isaac was baptised and then officiated at several baptisms undertaken privately in the homes of sympathisers. Together with his brother-in-law William Boulton he founded a separate group who called themselves 'Evangelical Friends' but were generally known by Quakers and others as Beaconites, after Isaac's pamphlet. They first met for worship on 18 September 1836 at an infant school before opening their 600-seat chapel nearby in Grosvenor Street, Chorlton-on-Medlock, Manchester on 17 December 1837. Here Isaac and William officiated and celebrated the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper. The Evangelical Friends held a Yearly Meeting echoing the style of the official Quaker Yearly Meeting in London in 1837 and for a short while published a monthly journal The Inquirer.

Map of the Dissenters Cemetery

The controversy had a devastating effect on Isaac Crewdson's life. Because of the rifts in his own family he was obliged to retire from business and his health broke down. He died at Bowness near Lake Windermere, where he had gone hoping for a cure, on 8 May 1844 aged sixty four and was buried in the Dissenters Cemetery at Rusholme Road in Manchester (now Gartside Gardens) near his home.  The Beaconites did not flourish and their chapel, which was sparsely attended, was sold to the Baptists in 1844, the same year that Isaac died. Many of those who had resigned from the Society of Friends with Isaac moved on to join the Church of England. A substantial number joined the Plymouth Brethren and brought Quaker simplicity of worship to that movement.   


Perhaps if Isaac had not gone to such extremes in his views and expressed them so uncompromisingly or if the reaction to what he said had not degenerated into personal attack then a separation might not have taken place. After all at this time Evangelicalism was on its way to becoming the new orthodoxy for British Quakers. However it was perhaps the shattering effect of this comparatively small separation that held British Quakers back from fragmenting in the way that American Quakers did at this time.