Quaker Alphabet Blog Week 49 - Y for Isabel Fell, later Yeamans, afterwards Morrice

Swarthmoor Hall

Isabel Fell was the third of the eight children born to Thomas and Margaret Fell (later Fox) in about 1637. In 1652 when she was fifteen years old she was convinced of the truth of Quakerism, along with her mother and some of her siblings, when George Fox visited the family home of Swarthmoor Hall in Lancashire. The house became a centre for the new movement and Isabel was a vital part of its development. 

In 1664 Isabel married another active Quaker William Yeamans, who was a merchant in Bristol where the couple set up home. They had two sons and two daughters but William junior and Margaret died in infancy. In 1674 Isabel's husband William died and she made extended visits back to the family home at Swarthmoor with her daughter Rachel and her surviving son, also named William. She began to travel in the ministry, particularly to meetings in the North, leaving her children in the care of their grandmother and aunts, although Rachel died in 1676 at the age of ten.

Swarthmoor Hall Quaker Tapestry panel

At this time and throughout her life Isabel was much concerned with the establishment and continuance of women's meetings among Friends in the face of opposition from some Quakers. In a letter written at Swarthmoor in 1676 she says that womens meetings should be ‘constant and frequent...to wait upon the lord to feel his power to administer counsel, wisdom and instruction that thereby your minds may be seasoned and fitted for the lord’s business.’  It is, she says, the work of the ‘elder and honourable women’ to be ‘teachers of good things that they may teach the young women according to the holy apostles’ exhortation and so be good examples and patterns of prudence...’ ‘Here will be work and business enough for us all that none need to be Idle in God’s vineyard, but as we have everyone received a measure of God’s spirit and grace some may be fellow helpers and workers together with our brethren in the work of the lord in these gospel days... ‘ ‘So every member of the body whereof Christ our lord is head may be serviceable and although we may be many members and some much more honourable than others yet no member though it be small is to be despised.’

In 1677 Isabel was chosen to accompany her step-father George Fox, William Penn, George Keith and Robert Barclay, the latter two accompanied by their wives, to preach Quakerism in Holland and Germany. Isabel herself preached to Princess Elizabeth of the Palatinate who admired her 'curious voice and freer way of delivering herself.' In 1678 Isabel travelled in Scotland with Robert Barclay and his wife and for the next dozen years she lived in various places including London and Stockton on Tees, where she was again much involved with women's meetings.

Lincoln meeting house built by Abraham Morrice

In 1690, at the age of 53 and after sixteen years of widowhood,  Isabel married another Quaker merchant, Abraham Morrice of Lincoln, and settled there. Her son William Yeamans died at the house of one of his aunts in 1698 when he was only 29 and Isabel and Abraham both died in 1704 when she was 67 years old.

Isabel was a Quaker pioneer who, although acknowledged as knowledgeable and accomplished by others, defined the true believer as one who had transcended intellectual accomplishments. ‘So look not for [God] in the shadows and forms without the power and substance',she wrote, 'nor be satisfied with the hearing of him by the hearing of the ear, or a notional traditional knowledge.’ She called instead for a gradual spiritual regeneration, an inward response to wisdom’s gentle voice within the soul. ‘Return, return, hearken unto the voice of wisdom; for she uttereth her voice in the streets of the world, and in the midst of the concourse of the people.’

 

Quaker Alphabet Blog Week 42 - U for 'Unknown, unhonoured and unsung'

This quotation from an almost forgotten poem by a little-known Californian poet, Samuel John Alexander, who garnered one favourable review from the New York Times in 1912 before vanishing into obscurity, sums up my reason for researching, writing and sharing the history of Quakers and others.

I never cease to be amazed at how little most Friends know about the history of the Quaker movement or of the faithful lives of our foremothers and forefathers. A few names will be familiar - George Fox, Margaret Fell, John Woolman, Elizabeth Fry - but what of the less well known? I have gained immeasurably from reading the writings, published and unpublished, of earlier Friends, from listening to these voices from the past, and I want to share that experience with others.

I know that some Friends today think that Quaker history is irrelevant to how we live our lives now but this is very far from the truth in my experience. If we can understand the shifts in emphasis over time, the differences in tradition and how they have developed, then we will be better equipped to face the difficulties of our own time. Do we worry about becoming an aged Society with no appeal to the young? - Friends in the 17th, 18th, 19th and even 20th centuries did too. Can their explorations and solutions help us now?

Our Quaker faith is based on faithfulness - to God, to our Inward Teacher, to our leadings and our testimonies - and it can help us in our struggles to hear stories of what has gone before. As Alice Hayes put it in 1723 'Truly I have thought that if I had met with the like Account of any that had gone through such exercise, it would have been some Help to me.'

Over the years, with varying levels of success, I have tried to encourage Friends to share their spiritual autobiographies as a help to others. I have also published the writings of earlier Quakers and written about their lives in many different places including this blog. All this is because I do not want these people, who I think of as my friends, to remain 'unknown, unhonoured and unsung' and also because I am convinced that they have much to say which can be a Help to us today.